The Dovekeepers

I first heard of Masada many years ago when I attended high school. The story of a Jewish stronghold, deep in the Judean mountains that held out against the forces of Rome for months, totally intrigued me. Of course the fortress eventually fell, and we all know the tragic end of these Jewish zealots who chose to commit mass suicide rather than submit to Rome. When I saw the book The Dovekeepers, a book about the fortress and the people who defended it written by Alice Hoffman, it renewed my interest in Masada and what actually happened there two thousand years ago.

The book, a work of historical fiction, follows the lives of four extraordinary women. Each woman tells her own story, each has unique talents and dark secrets, and each woman arrives at Masada by different routes and for different reasons. All four of these amazing women become dovekeepers at the fortress, and their lives intersect and interweave in unexpected ways. The book explores the bonds these women developed, the friendship that grew among them, and their courage and determination in the face of the coming fight with the Roman legions.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Hoffman brought these four women to vivid life and she also provided us with a glimpse of what life might have been like at Masada, the roles men and women held in this society, and how these people thought and believed two millennia ago.

I didn’t know prior to reading this book that legend has it that out of the 900 Jewish rebels and their families holed up as Masada, two women and five children survived. I gleaned this information from the introduction at the beginning of the book, so as I read the book I knew that two of the four women characters would survive and two would die in the slaughter when the Jews committed mass murder/suicide rather than become slaves of the Roman army.

Hoffman says in her introduction that information about Masada generally focuses on the men and the final battle, so her novel was an attempt on her part to give the women of Masada a voice as well. She succeeds in her quest, and in the process has written an absorbing book that kept my attention throughout. By the end of the read I had decided which two women and which children would survive, but I didn’t know how they would leave Masada alive, and I didn’t guess how the book would end.

I recommend this book not only as a good read but also as historical fiction that gives us an intriguing look at a portion of Jewish history. Alice Hoffman has done a fine job with her book The Dovekeepers.