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Scribner
October 2011
On Sale: October 4, 2011
512 pages
ISBN: 145161747X
EAN: 9781451617474
Hardcover
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Fiction
Over five years in the writing, The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman’s 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, 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. Yael’s
mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert
assassin, never forgave her for that death. 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. Aziza
is a warrior’s 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. The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman’s masterpiece.
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