One of the few Protestant women to write about the mother of Jesus, Beverly Roberts Gaventa takes a fresh approach to the figure who has fascinated Christians for twenty centuries and about whom we have such slender evidence. Rather than attempt to reconstruct Mary's life or assess her theological significance, Gaventa employs literary analysis to explore her varying characterizations in four early Christian narratives Matthew, Luke-Acts, John, and the Protenvangelium of James. Gaventa contends that each documents offers a distinct portrait and that John's Mary is no more interchangeable with Luke's than a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe is with an icon of the Queen of Heaven.