Eve
A Novel
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
BONUS: This edition contains an Eve discussion guide.
In this mesmerizing debut novel, Elissa Elliott blends biblical tradition with recorded history to put a powerful new twist on the story of creation’s first family. Here is Eve brought to life in a way religion and myth have never allowed–as a wife, a mother, and a woman. With stunning intimacy, Elliott boldly reimagines Eve’s journey before and after the banishment from Eden, her complex marriage to Adam, her troubled relationship with her daughters, and the tragedy that would overcome her sons, Cain and Abel. From a woman’s first awakening to a mother’s innermost hopes and fears, from moments of exquisite tenderness to a climax of shocking violence, Eve explores the very essence of love, womanhood, faith, and humanity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Elliott reimagines the story of Adam and Eve in a debut novel that richly evokes earliest biblical times. The story is told from the points of view of Eve and her daughters: Naava, the beautiful weaver; Aya, the quick-witted, club-footed cook; and Dara, the compassionate observant twin. Eve recounts the fall and how she and Adam wander until settling down to grow crops, raise livestock and start a garden of their own. Elliott offers readers vivid details about the first childbirth, the first intercourse, the first recriminations, the first environmental calamity and the first hunt, but the novel really comes alive when it departs from lushly imagined retelling and thrusts the family into unfamiliar territory when the brood encounters a city and city people. Elliott is at her imaginative and linguistic best describing city life, customs and architecture, building tension as Naava falls for a prince, fueling Cain's wrath. Elliott makes biblical fiction her own with a female perspective that emphasizes emotional turmoil, sensual experience and an impressive range of imagery that brings to life daily life in the beginning.