The Dovekeepers

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Dovekeepers Alice Hoffman 4.06 76075 ratings8730 reviews
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Award Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2011) Over five
years in the writing The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffmans
most ambitious and mesmerizing novel a tour de force of
imagination and research set in ancient Israel. In 70 C.E.
nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of
Romans on Masada a mountain in the Judean desert.
According to the ancient historian Josephus two women and
five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic
event Hoffmans novel is a spellbinding tale of four
extraordinarily bold resourceful and sensuous women each
of whom has come to Masada by a different path. Yaels
mother died in childbirth and her father an expert
assassin never forgave her for that death. Revka a village
bakers wife watched the horrifically brutal murder of her
daughter by Roman soldiers; she brings to Masada her young
grandsons rendered mute by what they have witnessed. Aziza
is a warriors daughter raised as a boy a fearless rider
and an expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow
soldier. Shirah born in Alexandria is wise in the ways of
ancient magic and medicine a woman with uncanny insight
and power. The lives of these four complex and fiercely
independent women intersect in the desperate days of the
siege. All are dovekeepers and all are also keeping
secrets – about who they are where they come from who
fathered them and whom they love.