The Book of Longings

Ana is a young woman raised in a wealthy Galilean family with ties to the ruler of Galilee. Rebellious, ambitious, and intellectually curious, she pursues clandestine scholarship and writes about neglected women while facing an arranged marriage to an older widower that terrifies her. An encounter with eighteen-year-old Jesus alters her path and leads to a marriage that unfolds with love, conflict, humor, and pathos in Nazareth, where she lives with Jesus, his brothers, and their mother, Mary. Ana’s private longings intensify amid mounting resistance to Rome partly led by her brother Judas. Sustained by her aunt Yaltha, who guards a compelling secret, Ana commits a brazen act that forces her to flee to Alexandria. In Egypt she encounters new dangers, startling revelations, and unexpected refuge before determining her fate during a convergence of events framed as historically consequential.