The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

Ana is the daughter of Matthias, the chief scribe to Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee who burns to be named king of the Jews by the Roman government.  Ana’s family is wealthy and she is destined to marry a wealthy man of her parents’ choosing, but what she really longs to do is study and write.  She especially wants to write down the stories of women in the Old Testament and also the stories of the remarkable women around her.  A chance meeting in the marketplace with a laborer named Jesus, who lives in the neighboring town of Nazareth, changes her life forever.

Wonderful writing and a completely different type of novel from Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees.  While Jesus and his followers are there, Kidd focuses on Ana and the women around her.  She skillfully weaves in the tales from the four gospels, but only those that would have been reasonable for Ana to have witnessed.

The story is about Ana, the fictional wife that Kidd created for Jesus, but Kidd also imagines the missing 18 years of Jesus’s life, based on historical record and traditions of the time.  It would have been unheard of for a Jewish man not to have a wife in the 1st century - marriage was the entry into manhood for a young man at that time.  It would have been expected by his family, his community, and his religion.  The celibate and ascetic Jesus of modern Christianity came into being about 200 years after Jesus lived, courtesy of a bunch of old guys who were running the church.  Kidd also notes that Jesus would have been a pariah (mamzer) in his community due to the questionable circumstances of his birth.  He might have been an outcast if not for the support of his earthly father Joseph.

Highly recommended, one of the best books I’ve read this year.  Don’t miss this one unless you can’t tolerate an idea that steps outside mainstream Christian teaching.