The Surrogate by Leonard Foglia and David Richards

THE SUDARIUM TRILOGY

The epic story of a holy relic, an innocent girl, a diabolical experiment that threatens to rip society asunder. “The Sudarium Trilogy” is a thriller for our times.

THE SURROGATE: BOOK ONE

In a remote corner of the Cathedral of Oviedo in Spain, Father Miguel Alvarez is in charge of taking care of the most holy relic of all Christendom: the sudarium, the towel-sized cloth which covered the face of Christ immediately following his death. At eighty years of age, behind the heavy grated door to the Camara Santa (the Holy Chamber), he prays fervently before the relic. Suddenly, a pair of hands grips his head, forcing him to breathe a moistened cloth that causes him to lose consciousness. Not, however, before he sees a masked figure with a scalpel in his hand leaning over the holy bloodstained sudarium.

Seven years later, in Fall River, Massachusetts, Hannah Manning, a 19 year-old waitress, is waiting for a sign – something that will tell her what she is supposed to be doing with her life. One day, she notices an advertisement in the newspaper looking for surrogate mothers. The emptiness in Hannah’s life suddenly subsides; she seems to have found something meaningful to do with herself. Instead of finding fulfillment as a surrogate mother, however, Hannah ends up taking a terrifying journey deep into a land of fanaticism and zealotry.

An international bestseller published in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Poland and Russia

The Surrogate is available in for both the Kindle and the Nook.

*****

“Little by little, Foglia and Richards reveal the strands that make up the conspiracy. For that, they succeed in joining the latest developments in genetic experimentation with the moral and religious implications that arise from such an undertaking. A great deal of what they imagine could already be carried out in our times, while other things could easily be a reality in the near future. 

’The Sudarium’ is a story that keeps the reader on the edge of his seat, even when he has turned the final page, because if some questions are answered in the course of the book, others continue to stick in the mind of whoever picks up this disturbing work.” – LA REFORMA (MEXICO)

*****

LEONARD FOGLIA is a theater and opera director as well as librettist. His work has been seen on Broadway, across the country as well as internationally. His theater credits include the original Broadway productions of MASTER CLASS (with Zoe Caldwell, Patti LuPone, Dixie Carter and Faye Dunaway), THURGOOD (with Laurence Fishburne) and THE PEOPLE IN THE PICTURE (with Donna Murphy) as well as the revivals of WAIT UNTIL DARK (with Quentin Tarantino and Marisa Tomei) and ON GOLDEN POND (with James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams). Off Broadway as well as on tour he directed Anna Deavere Smith’s LET ME DOWN EASY. His opera credits include the premiers of three operas by Jake Heggie – MOBY DICK, THREE DECEMBERS and THE END OF THE AFFAIR. His production of Heggie’s DEAD MAN WALKING has been seen across the country.

As a librettist his opera CRUZAR LA CARA DE LA LUNA (To Cross the Face of the Moon) had it’s premier at Houston Grand Opera in 2010 and was performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in the fall of 2011.

DAVID RICHARDS, for more than thirty years, was theater critic for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Washington Star. His articles have appeared in numerous publications in the United States. He is the author of PLAYED OUT: THE JEAN SEBERG STORY, a biography of the controversial American actress who vaulted to fame in France before committing suicide in 1979. Richards, who was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, holds Master’s degrees in French and Theater. He recently completed a third Masters degree at the University of Queretaro in Mexico, writing on the Mexican painter and caricaturist, Miguel Covarrubias. Richards lived in France and the Ivory Coast, where he taught English to African students as one of the first volunteers in the Peace Corps.

Foglia and Richards have written five books together:
RAGGED RIDGE ROAD, FACE DOWN IN THE PARK and THE SUDARIUM TRILOGY: THE SURROGATE, THE SON, THE SAVIOR.