Their connection deepens after she encounters Jesus in the cave where she is concealing her writings about oppressed women. On the very day Ana, age 14, meets her prospective betrothed, the repellent Nathanial, in the town market, she also encounters Jesus, a young tradesman, to whom she’s instantly drawn. Her adopted brother, Judas-yes, that Judas-is soon disowned for his nonconformity-plotting against Antipas. As Ana reaches puberty, parental tolerance of her nonconformity wanes, outweighed by the imperative to marry her off. Yaltha was also forced to give up her daughter, Chaya, for adoption. Her mother disapproves, but her aunt, Yaltha, mentors Ana in the ways of the enlightened women of Alexandria, from whence Yaltha, suspected of murdering her brutal husband, was exiled years before. She demonstrates an exceptional aptitude for writing, and Matthias, for a time, indulges her with reed pens, papyri, and other 16 C.E. I would be a chronicler of lost stories.In Kidd’s ( The Invention of Wings, 2014, etc.) feminist take on the New Testament, Jesus has a wife whose fondest longing is to write.Īna is the daughter of Matthias, head scribe to Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee. “I swore an oath to set down their accomplishments and praise their flourishings, no matter how small. “To be ignored, to be forgotten, this was the worst sadness of all,” Ana says. Namely, the stories of the matriarchs in the Scriptures who have been cast to the shadows. Ana, who faces her own tragedies, rises to that challenge again and again.Īfter her aunt’s arrival, Ana starts to think of her own parchments and scrolls she tucks away in her cedar chest less as her “audacities” and more as the contributions she wishes to leave for posterity. By reassembling her life – however broken - according to her own design.

The advice she gives to Ana is that all will be well. Yaltha is indeed a fascinating character, who sees and experiences tragedy but refuses to be victimized. Her mind was an immense feral country that spilled its borders. Yaltha, too, is a gift, about whom Ana says: “Unlike my mother, unlike every woman I knew, my aunt was educated. It is not until her Aunt Yaltha comes to live with her - bestowing on the girl all the warmth lacking in her mother - that Ana starts to see her intelligence not as an accident but as a gift from God. “My father suggested that while God was busy knitting me together in my mother’s womb, He’d become distracted and mistakenly endowed me with gifts destined for some poor baby boy.” “A child as awkward as I required an explanation,” Kidd writes, describing Ana’s rebellious nature and early conflict with gender norms. From childhood, Ana had always been different, having developed a love of writing and a longing to make her voice heard.

Book review the book of longings