Overview: The Angel Scroll, a new book by author Penelope Holt, recounts the story of one ancient prophecy, two heart-broken lovers, and a world-wide scavenger hunt for three miraculous paintings.

Verdict: The Angel Scroll. Prophecy. Destiny. Love.

After her husband’s death, New York artist Claire Lucas has baffling dreams and waking visions as she channels an enigmatic and healing painting of a holy man in India at the deathbed of a young woman. When widowed antiquarian Richard Markson announces that Claire’s canvas is one third of three paintings prophesied by the Angel Scroll, a recently discovered Dead Sea parchment, she is pulled into an international scavenger hunt to find the stolen scroll and the paintings it predicts.

As she pursues the paintings with Richard across historic and holy sites in America, Israel, and Europe, Claire encounters a series of remarkable teachers. A Buddhist, a Benedictine monk, and a professor of early goddess worship all provide rich explanations for the artist’s compelling and perplexing psychic experiences. But it is not until the three paintings are finally assembled that Claire deciphers their inspirational message for the modern world.

Knowing before hand that the author, Penelope Holt was a playwright, novelist, marketing executive, and prolific business writer, meant that I went into this latest novel, The Angel Scroll, knowing it was a spiritual romance mystery. But that said, I just was not prepared for how intriguing, how informatively earnest, just how elegantly scripted, wonderfully laid out, and how masterfully structured and eloquently sculpted it would be.

Told through 12 engrossing chapters, it opens in Benares, India, and, quite literally, mentally grabs your attention, not allowing you room for movement of any kind to pull away, save for, perhaps, the replacement of a butt cheek from one pressure point to another, as you shift yourself from a seated position you will now hold steady reading for the next few hours or so.

In short, The Angel Scroll is an excellent, amazingly well written, thoroughly entertaining read from start to finish (I read it whole in just two sittings over two days) and allows the wonderful author to truly get behind the human emotions that constantly show themselves within this layered prose.

About the Author - Penelope Holt was born and educated in the UK. She lives and works in New York and is the author of The Apple, Angels in Harlem, and Business Intelligence at Work.

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