Foundations, volume one, gives you a unique picture of Jesus, the teenager. He figures out how to leave home, make friends, manage moods, and deal with complex identity issues. He learns how to cope with the murder of his father. He falls in love, learning how to risk loving a beautiful woman from another culture and yet stay loyal to his felt destiny or calling.

Parables picks up Jesus' story at around twenty years of age. We learn how Jesus became a master teacher. Jesus did not speak without telling parables. He told stories of good people who went bad; bad people who went good; stories with sad outcomes and glad ones. He taught by contrast: this is a good person, that is a bad one. He didn’t lecture. He told stories.

Journey, volume three, walks alongside Jesus in his mid-twenties. These adventure stories are set inside the Italy, modern day Albania, Cyprus, and Egypt. Journey showcases a growing Jesus who deals with authority, regulates his moods, deals with abuse, and balances love with loss. We also see how his Spirit, Windy, travels the planet with and apart from him, weaving his presence back and forth into his life and the lives of those he loved.

This is the last volume in Jesus' Silent Years, a four-volume book series that has only one focus—the wisest, sanest, and most beautiful person who has ever lived. The stories of romance, grief, and violence dance to the drumbeat of destiny. Theyfill in a few gaps of what might have been. Home has been famously defined as the place people have to take you when no one else will. Some homecomings are less than what they’re cracked up to be. One of Jesus’ friends comes home to a dead wife; an enemy comes home to hell, another friend to her “mother issues,” and a fourth friend to a more cohesive, kindly sense of self. Finally, Jesus comes home to his rightful place as Messiah. Like him, we only find home as we journey with friends, listening to the Spirit, with one eye on our true home.