Over five years in the writing, The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffmans most ambitious and mesmerizing novel, a tour de force of imagination and research, set in ancient Israel. In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffmans novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path. Yaels mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death. Revka, a village bakers wife, watched the horrifically brutal murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers she brings to Masada her young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed.
