The New Testament tells us very little about Lydia, a seller of purple cloth who was living in Philippi when she met the apostle Paul on his second missionary journey. And yet she is considered the first recorded convert to Christianity in Europe.In her second work of fiction, Biblical scholar and popular author and speaker Paula Gooder tells Lydia's story – who she was, the life she lived and her first-century faith – and in doing so opens up Paul's letter to the Philippians, giving a sense of the cultural and historical pressures that shaped Paul's thinking, and the faith of the early church.

Written in the gripping style of Gerd Theissen's The Shadow of the Galilean, and similarly rigorously researched, this is a book for everyone and anyone who wants to engage more deeply and imaginatively with Paul's theology – from one of the UK's foremost New Testament scholars.