Sarai
A Novel
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4.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Sarai, the last child of her aged father, is beautiful, spoiled, and used to getting her own way. Even as a young girl, she is aware of the way men look at her, including her half brother Abram. When Abram finally requests Sarai's hand, she asks one thing--that he promise never to take another wife as long as she lives. Even her father thinks the demand is restrictive and agrees to the union only if Sarai makes a promise in return--to give Abram a son and heir. Certain she can easily do that, Sarai agrees.
But as the years stretch on and Sarai's womb remains empty, she becomes desperate to fulfill her end of the bargain--lest Abram decide that he will not fulfill his. To what lengths will Sarai go in her quest to bear a son? And how long will Abram's patience last?
Jill Eileen Smith thrilled readers with The Wives of King David series. Now she brings to life the strong and celebrated wives of the patriarchs, beginning with the beautiful and inscrutable Sarai.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following the successful Wives of King David series, Smith opens her new Wives of the Patriarchs series with this midrashic expansion of the story of Abraham and his wife, Sarah. In the biblical account, Sarah gives birth in her old age to Isaac, as God has promised her husband, Abraham, whose descendants will be as numerous as stars. In this account, the beautiful Sarai, as she is first called, deeply loves her husband and follows him when his Lord calls, even as she waits for decades for the promised child and endures a dangerous passage to Egypt that produces a threat to her marriage in the form of her maid Hagar. Smith is at her best in handling the triangulated relationship between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar; the subplot involving Abraham's nephew Lot and his family is less emotionally compelling. The pace occasionally drags, but most of the book is about faithful waiting. Smith breathes new imaginative life into a well-known sacred story.
