In this novel Hoffman imagines the lives of the two women survivors and the lives of two friends who perished. Through a series of circumstances, two women and five children end up surviving. By the year 73, with the Roman army set to overrun the fortress, the rebels, who numbered 900 men, women, and children, devised a suicide scheme, rather than submit to the Romans. In 70 AD, after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, a number of Sicarii, militant Jewish rebels, made their way to Masada, a fortress built by King Herod on a high plateau in the Judean desert near the Dead Sea.
This novel is short on the happy endings Hoffman’s fans may hope for, but readers looking for a compelling story full of vivid characters in a dramatic and haunting setting won’t be disappointed. Although it plays on some of her favorite themes - magic, mystery, witchcraft, strong women - it’s a departure for the prolific author of popular women’s fiction. Alice Hoffman’s “The Dovekeepers’’ is a splendid entertainment, a harrowing, thrilling, feminist historical novel fueled to fever pitch by a rich imagination.
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