'The Dovekeepers' by Alice Hoffman

The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman (4.0)

This historical fiction became even more meaningful to me when I read the detail in the afterword. Ms. Hoffman explains that the story came to her after visiting the ancient site, the Masada, where in 73 C.E. 900 Jews held out for months against armies of Romans. She visited the museum that had descriptions and bones from the site and she wrote stories around those bones from the point of view of 4 fictional women. The book started off quite slowly, but eventually I was enthralled with each of the intertwining stories and eager to understand what happens to each of the main characters (according to one ancient historian 2 women and a group of children survived). Each woman has an interesting tale of where she is from and whom she has become – all with the complexity of being independent during that era and fighting to survive without the typical family structure.