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Based on the famous story cycle about the prophet Elisha and an unnamed Gentile woman found in the book of 2 Kings in the Bible, Anderson's retelling imagines those events from the moment when the young girl (here named Marta) is betrothed against her will to a man named Saana, a wealthy but odious farmer beloved of her father.
It's 835 B.C. in the land of Canaan, and sixteen-year-old Marta stands on the cusp of adulthood. Although hardly more than a child, she is already independent, impulsive, and headstrong. Viewing the arranged marriage as a devastating act of betrayal, she attempts to extricate herself. When this proves impossible, Marta—bolstered by the kindness of the prince of Shunem, her only friend—intervenes to protect the servants from her husband's abuses. She insists on sleeping in separate rooms and, for some time, the marriage remains unconsummated. However, she yearns for a son.
Saana keeps his distance, "his bitter attitude toward the world... alienating him from every person he knew." For several years, the marriage enters a period of grueling stasis. Marta, now twenty-six, meets an itinerant Hebrew prophet named Elisha who seems to possess unnatural powers of discernment. He and his servant, Gehazi, lodge in Marta's home. Marta is incredulous when Elisha informs her that next year she will give birth to a son. When she conceives shortly thereafter, she begins to suspect that Elisha's God is truly with him. She names the boy Eli and raises him largely without her husband's assistance. He becomes her most treasured possession, until the day a sudden illness takes him from her.
Anderson's book excels with its faithfulness to the biblical narrative and commitment to historical accuracy. Unlike many authors in this genre, he has clearly researched the foods, fashions, and living arrangements of people living in the ninth century before Christ, and the book is valuable as a means of educating readers about what written and archaeological records can tell us about that era. Scene-setting details early in the story—an ancient grove of olive trees, flat-roofed houses covered in a mixture of mud and plaster, the aroma of meat, bread, and spices—not only help to immerse the reader in an unfamiliar world but also signal that trust in the author isn't misplaced.
The most compelling portions of the story center on the fraught relationship between Marta and her husband. Anderson's realistic portrait of a loveless marriage is anchored by his surprising sympathy for both parties. Far from being a one-dimensional baddie in the vein of Mr. Murdstone from David Copperfield, Saana is a pathetic figure leading a loveless, unhappy life. He displays occasional glimmers of self-awareness, in which he seems to realize he's headed for a bad end. Because Anderson resists the easy path of demonizing him, the reader is riveted by the increasingly tense exchanges between husband and wife.
There's the occasional false note—moments when Marta speaks and behaves more like a twenty-first-century woman than a woman of antiquity—but it helps to remember that historical fiction has always been more about the time in which it was written than the time it ostensibly portrays. Anderson has done the world a service by reimagining this story for our times. Here is a book for anyone who has ever felt trapped in an untenable situation and has lost hope.