"Breathtaking tour de force...stunning...bloody brilliant from start to finish"

Writing historical fiction is a tough road. A writer can step so easily into various pitfalls. Choosing to step into this quicksand, Amy Solter has selected a very difficult path in taking on Bibical lore, and looking beyond at the people not the tales. Deborah can be found in the Books of Judges, telling of her triumph, how she saved her people. It is a first person account, relating the victory of the Israelites led by General Barak, guided by Deborah. This account in Judges Book 4. Book 5 has the same story in poetic form and is thought to have been composed in the later 12th Century BC, shortly after the events had taken place. Deborah was a leader, a prophetess, the fourth and only female Judge. It's spoken she was the mother of Israel, so Deborah is an interesting study of a woman in power, respected. God spoke threw her and men bowed to her wisdom. She is the earliest portrayal of a woman of intelligence and authority, instead of the typical victims or villainess in biblical tales.

Very little is known about this amazing figure. She was "married" to a man named Lapidoth, she was a poet, as were the women of her line, originally an apostate to the pagan god Baal, and later she rendered judgments under a palm tree in Ephraim in the name of Yahweh. She was independently wealthy, owning palm trees in Jericho, orchards in Ramah and oil-producing olives in Beth-el. Simply, this woman was an amazing leader for any period, but for this period of the rise of patriarchal Christianity, her story is all the more astounding.

Solter goes to the roots of the Song of Deborah, steps into her shoes and breathes life into the story, asks the question, who was this remarkable woman, what drove her to rise up and lead a rebellion to see the Israelites freed? She delivers not a biblical tale, but a story of a woman, her beliefs and the power of destiny.

Solter's writing is amazing, drawing the reader into the narrative to where it's not a stuffy two-dimensional biblical tale, but one full of life and force. I am not a biblical scholar so I cannot address the merits and won't even try. Solter's fictionalize account is stunning, so I judge it solely on the writer's ability to tell a spellbinding story. It is an incredible work that challenges the reader, yet offers so much.

You follow Deborah's early life through the events that sent her down the road that saw her abandoning her gods, beliefs and family, to eventually finding the One-True God spoken through her. Solter's writing grabbed me from the very start and never let me go as I hungrily devoured page after page.

The story is bold, the delivery done with sure, solid, visionary prose from a talent that is nothing less than phenomenal.

Reviewed by DeborahAnne MacGillivray
Posted October 9, 2005