![]() ![]() She had a rare chance at education and encourages her niece in her writing. Ana’s aunt, Yaltha from Alexandria, is a major influence in her life. Privilege and luck are on her side: her father is the head scribe to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee and the repulsive widower to whom she’s been betrothed dies, freeing her to marry Jesus, a travelling craftsman who caught her eye at the market. Musing on the motivation for airbrushing a spouse out of the picture, on the last page of the novel Kidd asks, “Did believe making him celibate rendered him more spiritual?” Or “Was it because women were so often invisible?” Although The Book of Longings retells biblical events, it is chiefly an attempt to illuminate women’s lives in the 1st century CE and to chart the female contribution to sacred literature and spirituality.įourteen-year-old Ana is a headstrong young woman with a forthright voice and a determination to choose her own life. ![]() ![]() Sue Monk Kidd’s bold fourth novel started as a what-if question: What if Jesus had a wife? Church tradition has always insisted that he remained unmarried, but she felt that, given the cultural norms of the Middle East at that time, it would have been highly unusual for him not to marry. ![]()
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