Earlier this week, on the Web site of national retailer Barnes & Noble, the book "Master" by Provo resident Toni Sorenson had a sales rank of 613,663. It seems safe to assume, then, that the eager reader who purchased 100 copies earlier this year does not shop online.

"This is the only book I've ever written that my kids have actually read," said mother-of-six Sorenson. What makes that even more meaningful for the author is that the book has proven equally engaging to adult readers. A satisfied customer in her 70s called Sorenson, 48, from Logan to report that, although she'd never managed to read the entire Bible, she was on her third time through "Master."

"Someone asked her, 'Can I borrow this book you're so crazy about?' " Sorenson said. "She said, 'No, you can't. As soon as I'm finished, I'm going to read it again!' "

Kathy Jenkins, managing editor at Covenant Communications, which published "Master" in February, said that it inspired strong reactions even before it became available in stores. One person who read it in advance, Brigham Young University religion professor Robert L. Millet, said in a release issued by Covenant that "Master" is a "warm and inviting novel," and that Sorenson's effort to "make Jesus and his disciples more tangible, more real, is to be applauded."

Jenkins said that Ed J. Pinegar, a former president of the Missionary Training Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was moved to weep after reading a pre-publication manuscript copy.

"He called me in tears," said Jenkins, "and said, 'I need the author's phone number, I've never read anything like this.' "

The success of the book is no real surprise to Sorenson, who takes very little credit for "Master" herself. "It's not my story," she said. "It's the story of Jesus Christ, and it has the power to transform lives."

A 'personal miracle'

Her own, for example. Sorenson, who studied English at Brigham Young University but has actively written "since I was a little girl," said that researching and writing the book was a "personal miracle" at a difficult stage of her life.

She worked on "Master" while in the midst of a painful divorce from Kenneth Brown, her husband of nearly 25 years. The writing and research helped to divert her thoughts and energy from the disruption in her personal life. "The person I chose to focus on was Jesus Christ," she said.

The structure of the novel, and the idea for it, came from Sorenson's reading of a passage in the Gospel of St. John, in the New Testament, that describes Jesus's transformation of water into wine for a wedding feast. Jesus involves the servants of the household where the wedding is to take place, which turned a key in Sorenson's brain.

"Jesus had to have some kind of authority to command people to go do things for him," she said.

According to Jewish custom, Sorenson said, Jesus's mortal father, Joseph, as a skilled artisan, would have been obligated to have servants in his household. There are still places in Africa, she said, where similar customs mandate that persons of a certain social standing have a cook, a maid, a gardener, "in order to help share the wealth."

The idea that Joseph and Mary would have had servants suggested the character of Almon, who, in the novel, meets Jesus's family shortly after the death of his father and is taken in as a servant. The events of Jesus's childhood years, his ministry, and his eventual crucifixion and resurrection are all seen through Almon's eyes.

The novel, then, is also the story of Almon, and Sorenson said she thinks people will identify with the character in the same way that she herself did. Almon's individual journey, she said, "shows how one person's life can be changed and transformed by the Savior, and that same thing has happened in my life.

"And I just want to share it with everyone."

One thing that was especially important to Sorenson was to have the book accurately reflect Jewish culture and history during the period that Jesus lived and taught in the cities and districts around Jerusalem. It's not an easy thing to accomplish.

"Gerald Lund wrote a series on the life and times of Jesus," said Jeff Needle, the review editor of the Association for Mormon Letters. (Lund's series, similar to his "Work and the Glory" novels, is called "The Kingdom and the Crown.") "I read the first 100 pages and said, 'This isn't very good, but I'll finish it.' "

Then Needle, who is Jewish, got to a passage where a character says the word "oy" -- technically a Jewish expression, but from the Yiddish language that grew out of a fusion Hebrew, Aramaic and (aha!) medieval (primarily Germanic) European languages.

"It was so silly," Needle said, "that I threw the book down and wrote to the editor and said, 'I can't finish this book.' "

To avoid making a similar mistake, Sorenson resorted to digesting "piles and piles and stacks of books," as well as asking scholars at both the University of Utah and BYU to help her verify the historical authenticity of "Master's" setting, dialogue, characters and other elements.

Needle hasn't read "Master," but said he knows from Sorenson's other work -- in particular, "Redemption Road," which won the AML's 2006 best novel award -- that she has "an extraordinary ability to take a life situation and put it on paper."

Her task required some imagination -- the New Testament writers describe Jesus's childhood and teenage years in a bare handful of verses, whereas Sorenson takes, she said, "more than 200 pages." The author, however, was careful not to imagine certain things: it's important to her that every line spoken by Jesus in the novel is from the New Testament.

"I never put words in Christ's mouth," she said. "I went into it knowing that I was going to write it like that."

That means Jesus uses "thee" and "thou," while the language of Almon and other characters is a bit less "King James Version." Jenkins said she thinks most readers won't even notice -- because they'll be caught up in something larger.

"This has probably been, for me," she said, "the most tender and poignant and revealing work about the Savior that I've ever read."

• Cody Clark can be reached at 344-2542 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it