Kathleen McGowan

• 1. Introduction

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  Kathleen McGowan was born on the 22nd of March, 1963, with a personal claim that frames everything she would later write. She describes herself as a descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. That belief is not incidental to her work. It is the foundation of it. She arrived at authorship through an unlikely door. Her first book reached print under her birth name, Kathleen Harkey-Smith, and its subject was the inner workings of Disney. The journey from that debut to a career as a published novelist unfolded over decades, and her claimed ancestry shaped it at every turn. What drove her to spend so many years writing about women history had tried to forget? And what finally turned those years of work into the readership she has today?

• 2. Sixteen Years in Draft

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  In 1989, McGowan began writing what would become The Expected One, a novel centered on the role of Mary Magdalene. She would not see it in a bookshop for another sixteen years. When it appeared in 2005, it was self-published, and it sold 2,500 copies. That might have been the end of the story. Instead, on the 25th of July, 2006, Simon & Schuster republished it under the Touchstone imprint. The book became a New York Times Best Seller. From those 2,500 self-published copies, it grew to over a million copies worldwide. Readers encountered it in more than fifty languages. It was the opening volume of the Magdalene Line, a series whose scope would eventually stretch well beyond Mary Magdalene herself.

• 3. Heroines and Heresy

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  Maureen Paschal is not a historical figure. She is the fictional heroine at the center of every Magdalene Line novel. McGowan invented her to serve as a guide through the historical and Christian enigmas at the heart of each story. Paschal moves through a world that also includes other invented figures: Berenger Sinclair, Tamara Wisdom, and the enigmatic character known as Destino. McGowan built the series on a single premise: that history had misrepresented or obliterated the women at its heart. The second novel, The Book of Love, appeared in 2009. It centered on the life of Mathilda of Canossa, and it also became a New York Times Best Seller. The Poet Prince, published in 2010, turned to the life of Lorenzo de Medici, and it matched the same achievement. The fourth novel, The Boleyn Heresy: The Time Will Come, arrived in 2022. That placed the series' publication span at more than thirty years.

• 4. Seven Steps at Chartres

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  At the center of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth sits a six-petalled rose. McGowan drew on that image for The Source of Miracles, a self-help book she built around the Lord's Prayer. The book outlines seven steps intended to help readers transform their lives. Those steps treat the prayer not as a liturgical text but as a practical guide for personal change. Fireside published the book in 2009 under its full title: The Source of Miracles: Seven Steps to Transforming Your Life Through the Lord's Prayer.

• 5. Ancient Aliens to Oak Island

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  McGowan appeared as a presenter on Ancient Aliens, a series broadcast on the History Channel and its sister network H2. She also featured in Bible Secrets Revealed. Her appearances in The Curse of Oak Island spanned seasons two and five, both also on the History Channel. On an episode of Mysteries of the Bible, McGowan stated her position plainly. In her words, "a group of men with agendas of politics and economics and not spirituality, decided on the texts of the bible." The television work kept her visible during a decade that would also bring significant change to her personal life.

• 6. Three Marriages

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  McGowan has been married three times. Her first husband was Peter McGowan, an Irish musician. They raised three children together before the marriage ended in divorce in 2010. The following year, she married Philip Coppens, and together they created an internet radio program called The Spirit Revolution. Coppens died in 2012, barely a year after the wedding. Her third marriage came in March 2023, to Nasser Abo Nazer, an Egyptian mystic. Abo Nazer is based at Abydos, and McGowan now divides the year between her writing and a life in Luxor.