(Viking)
Sue Monk Kidd, author of the beloved “Secret Life of Bees,” vividly portrays Ana, as the imagined wife of Jesus, in her new richly textured, historically accurate and deeply engrossing novel. Ana, born in Sepphoris as the daughter of the chief scribe to the leader of Galilee, Herod Antipa, is an educated woman, whose inner longings are not to be a wife, mother, or helpmeet, but rather to be a scribe, to be a writer of her own stories and the stories of women who came before her and after her, to be a voice for silenced women. She openly rebels against society’s demands, including her parents’ choice for a husband, determined to choose her own path. She meets, and marries, Jesus, depicted as a man progressive in his views, when he is 18, years before he is recognized as the Messiah. She composes and writes her own stories; she prays to God to hear her longings; she tells other women to stand up for themselves. This surprising, briskly-paced novel imagines an ancient world where Ana can be a scribe, and the fascinating and important stories of Ruth, Esther, Judith and many more women’s stories are written, recorded and preserved.
— Reviewed by Jenny Lyons of The Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury.
 

8 novels of ancient historical fiction
 
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma
The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Damascus Road by Jay Parini
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon