The Dovekeepers opens with the story of Yael, who is The Assassin’s Daughter. Not having any fore-knowledge of the history, geography, or culture of these characters, I think it’s astonishing that the author pulled me across two thousand years and all my ignorance into these stories. The resonance of these narratives is truly remarkable. (I won’t repeat more of the praise, either: lots of that here.) “Beautiful, harrowing, a major contribution to twenty-first century literature.” What I had already understood, though, was why Toni Morrison’s praise was so robust. I discovered them halfway through reading this novel and I could understand, then, what I had heard about the author’s process of discovery. (I won’t repeat more of her words on this haunting process: her letter to the reader is here.)īefore you read further, you might want to peek at the gallery of images of this fortress and its environs. “It was a gift from my great-great grandmothers, the women of ancient Israel who first spoke to me when I visited the mountain fortress of Masada.”
She doesn’t feel that she chose to tell the story she felt driven to tell it. Inspired by the the lost stories of two women and five children who survived an ancient massacre, Alice Hoffman spent five years writing The Dovekeepers.
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