Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Mairi

Eve well remembers what it was to be the only woman in the world, though she now shares that role with three daughters: the beautiful if sometimes aloof Naava, the crippled Aya, and Dara, who, at seven, is too young to have found her place in the world. But then a strange tribe of people comes by the house that she and Adam share. They are looking for a girl to come and work for them, but she cannot possibly let Naava go out among such brutal people when she is just becoming a woman.

This was a really popular book the first week after the library got it. I don't know what they were expecting, but it clearly wasn't what they got, because after a month I couldn't pay people to take it off the shelves, so (being the kindhearted person that I am) I decided to read the neglected little book myself, and I loved it. All of the characters (especially Eve and Naava) read like real people, which meant that, while I sometimes loved them and sometimes hated them, I could always understand the motivations for their actions.

This book isn't a romantic epic dripping in melodrama, or a preachy bit of religious fiction- if I had to put it in a genre I would call it historical fiction, and good historical fiction at that.