Al Campo is trying to avoid falling back into bed with government work when he stumbles across a mystery of his own. After a stint in the Middle East as an FBI consultant, Campo is on his way to a safe house in Pennsylvania when he narrowly misses running over a small girl, and succeeds in hitting a ginger haired man. What follows is a winding road of assorted characters leading back to biblical times.
The sequel to Robert DiGiacomo’s initial Al Campo book, The Blood Led Her spans centuries and imaginatively expands upon the narrative of The Passion of the Christ. Campo is swept up in saving Eva, the lone child we meet in the beginning of the book, and aiding her to escape the hired hit men who are after her. Eva refuses to let anyone touch her backpack, and even as she begins to trust Campo, she struggles to truly open to up to him. Meanwhile, the hit men remain in relentless pursuit of Eva and her backpack while Campo tries to decipher who could want to kill an innocent 12-year-old girl.
The book begins with a seemingly unconnected storyline set in ancient Rome. Claudia doesn’t know exactly where her husband Decius has been all day, but when he comes home dusty and bloody, clutching a scroll bearing orders to kill someone named Jesus Christ, she doesn’t fully recognize the significance of this execution. The blood of Christ becomes the thread that weaves this tale together.
DiGiacomo’s storytelling is compelling, but with so many characters and locations, as well as an abundance of flashbacks, the plot gets lost in the verbiage and winds up confusing the reader. By the time Campo figures out the connection between Eva, the letter in her backpack, and the untold power it possesses, he is overcome with tenderness and affection for a child he’s known only a few days.
This was the most challenging thing for me to grasp about The Blood Led Her: the entire plot of the book is about the deeply felt connection between a young girl and a stranger who represents a father figure.
The Blood Led Her communicates the importance of unconditional love in a life, and the lengths one will go to protect it. DiGiacomo does an excellent job recreating a modern version of the Passion of the Christ, and even though the intricate details of the plot are a bit fuzzy, it is still an innovative take on an ancient story known by anyone who practices any of the Judeo-Christian religions.
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