The DaVinci Code

The Da Vinci Code: A Novel.
Dan Brown.
New York: Doubleday. 2003.

Robert Langdon, an archaeologist and symbologist, and Sophie Neveau, a police cryptographer, become caught up in a race to find the Holy Grail, which is not a cup, but papers that show Mary Magdalene to be the wife of Christ. A novel with numerous twists--people who are not what they seem, trusted people who turn into enemies, people who aggressively hunt but then become themselves the victims--the goal of those who want the Holy Grail is to destroy the Catholic Church because if it were ever known that Christ married Magdalene and founded a line--to which Sophie learns she belongs--the male-dominated Church would be shown to be a lie. Christ, it is suggested in the novel, wanted his wife Mary Magdalene to found his church, not the Apostles. If she had, it should have been a church dominated by the "sacred feminine," not the male-dominated institution it has been throughout history. In the end, Langdon finds the location of the Holy Grail in France, but he can "keep a secret."