The first part of the book, The Assassin’s Daughter, tells the story of Yael via her thoughts and objectives, from the moment she formulates the belief that she “murdered” her mother (who died as a result of childbirth) and therefore deserved her father’s “indignation and wrath,” to her close relationship with her brother Amram, who she says “belonged to dreams rather than to the routine of our daily lives,” to having to flee Jerusalem with her father, an aged assassin, as the second temple is destroyed. The consistent themes of the story are dedication, God, and The World to Come, as filtered through the Sicarii mind whilst they fight for their ancestral land, and I find it amazing to witness the ways of “our people” through the eyes of these women, each with a distinct voice, keeping in mind that they lived mere decades after Jesus. What I loved about this book was that though it was written through the perspectives of four different female characters, each of those characters tells a continuation of the story through her own eyes amid varying positions and walks of life that bleed into one. The careful study that Hoffman has done on the Jewish sect, the Sicarii, and their last stronghold, Masada, has allowed her readers to witness an event that has been long etched into history.

Hoffman is the author of over thirty works of fiction, including The Dovekeepers, which is a feat that makes her one of the most prolific authors on the market today. The Dovekeepers, a novel written in 2011 by Alice Hoffman, and its namesake TV movie, executive produced in 2015 by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, are different entities entirely, and as a result of Hoffman’s diligent research and in-depth characters the book stands out as superior.

The dovekeepers book review