“ The Dovekeepers” is an enormously ambitious, multi-part story, richly decorated with the details of life 2,000 years ago. Sometimes, the results are practically magic sometimes, they’re practically laughable.īut nothing she’s written would prepare you for the gravitas of her new book, an immersive historical novel about Masada during the Roman siege in the 1st century. A trip through her enormous body of work - for adults and young people - is a jarring ride, from the loveliness of “ Illumination Night” to the schlockiness of “ The River King.” Hang on tight and you’ll swerve from the quiet power of her short stories in “ Local Girls” to the groaning hokiness of “ The Ice Queen.” In bestseller after bestseller, she explores women’s subjects and feminist themes, especially ancient and modern expressions of witchcraft. ( From the publisher.Alice Hoffman may be the most uneven writer in America. Taking more than five years to be written, The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman’s masterpiece. All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets-about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them, and whom they love. The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege. Shirah, born in Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power. Aziza is a warrior’s daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and an expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier.

Revka, a village baker’s 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. Yael’s mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman’s novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.

According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman’s most ambitious and mesmerizing novel, a tour de force of imagination and research, set in ancient Israel.

The dovekeepers summary