Some took refuge with the Sacarii, Jewish rebels led by Eleazar ben Ya'ir in Herod's hill fortress of Masada, with the settlement eventually swelling to accommodate more than 900 fighters and refugees.
According to the Roman historian Josephus, the inhabitants committed mass suicide when the stronghold was eventually breached in AD73, with only two women and five children surviving the destruction (although there is little material evidence to support this account).
Although the exact details are lost in time, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (Simon and Schuster) draws heavily on historical and archaeological records to present Masada's last days through the fictional eyes of four women who witness its fall; the red-haired assassin's daughter Yael, elderly baker's wife Revka, healer and kadeshah (witch) Shirah and Aziza, her warrior daughter.
At first glance, these disparate narrators have little in common other than their shared task in the dovecotes, where they tend the birds whose eggs feed the people and droppings nourish the fields.
Yet each has suffered great personal loss, and been forced to violate religious and cultural rules in order to survive.
Over time, the sharing of secrets and experiences builds strong bonds of trust and loyalty between them, and as the rains fail, crops wither and Roman garrisons mass outside the walls, they form a united front to protect what little they have left.
The novel is set over the course of a year, each quarter presented by one of the women, with their individual stories interspersing events in the besieged fortress.
The author is not sparing in her descriptions of the harsh and brutal situations her characters find themselves in, but these events also serve to highlight the broader themes that underlie the novel; faith, friendship, the power of maternal love, and the necessity and strength of silence in a society where women who step outside the boundaries are shunned or worse.
The Dovekeepers is also faithful to known facts; the Romans may be pitiless, but the rebels, too, are not without blame, attacking and murdering nearby Jewish settlers for food and water.
Although Hoffman's re-creation of place and time are vivid and realistic, and the tragedy that unfolds is compelling and deserves to be more widely known, I felt strangely disconnected from its characters.
While the four women have very different tales to tell, I had little sense of their individual voices, and as hardship followed hardship I found my attention flagging.
This is as (if not more) likely to be a failure on my part rather than that of the author, and I would certainly recommend this to fans of Hoffman's other work, but for myself I would have preferred a history without the fiction.
- Cushla McKinney
