A deeply thoughtful tale that skillfully depicts the origins of Judaic tradition.
In this historical novel set in 3500 B.C.E., a Bedouin tribesman travels to Sumer in search of a new god.
Tiras grows up as part of a Bedouin tribe in central Saudi Arabia worshipping Martu, the bull god, an unmerciful master who exacts terrible sacrifices as punishment for even minor transgressions. Always inquisitive and even skeptical as a child, Tiras questions the tribe’s allegiance to such a vengeful god, a defiance that fatefully leads to tragedy. When he angers the tribe’s priest, Abu-Summu, Tiras’ daughter, Shallah, is summarily sentenced to a beating so vicious it kills her. Utterly despondent, Tiras blames himself for Shallah’s death, and when he hears of gentler gods in Sumer, he travels there to learn more. He is driven by a need to find a god superior to Martu but also by a “hunger for knowledge of the world.” There, he meets Mah Ummia, a physician and scholar happy to teach Tiras about his own religion, one in which the gods resemble men and not beasts, show pity toward the suffering, and promise a new life after death in paradise. Tiras returns home, eager to proselytize about “a powerful new god, El, who’d conquered all the other gods.” The traveler is excited about his new discoveries, but he meets fierce resistance, particularly from Abu-Summu. Tiras even fears punishment from Martu: “But how to tell his tribe about those gods? Surely Martu would grow jealous and demand terrible retribution. Dare he risk his family’s life to help his people?”
Miller deftly explores a historical possibility in literary terms—the emergence of Judaism out of contact between Bedouin Arabs and Sumerians. The author intelligently traces a potential theological genealogy, a captivating and nuanced account of how one religion emerges out of the influence of another. Tiras is first motivated by personal grief but then by curiosity and astonishment, a remarkable amalgam of practical and theoretical concerns, and a moral attraction to more than just gods: “Tiras listened intently, his eyes squinting in surprise. The Sumerian gods were smiling? Gentle? No human sacrifice? How had the Sumerians learned to attract such sympathetic gods?” Eventually, with the help of Tiras’ sons, a new mythology is born, one in which the protagonist is transformed from a grieving father into a prophet heralding a new faith. Miller doesn’t allow the historical elements of the story to overwhelm the dramatic ones—the plot is by turns as gripping as it is moving. Nonetheless, this is a historically impressive work, and it is precisely this authenticity that is the book’s principal strength. The author’s research is admirably rigorous—painstakingly meticulous as well as astonishingly expansive in scope. While she permits herself some considerable artistic license, especially given the timeline of this religious transmission—“the time period in the novel has been compressed to spread events over several generations rather than several millennia”—none of that literary latitude diminishes the work’s dramatic or historical power.
A deeply thoughtful tale that skillfully depicts the origins of Judaic tradition.Pub Date: April 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4808-8444-1
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
