“I swore an oath to set down their accomplishments and praise their flourishings, no matter how small. “To be ignored, to be forgotten, this was the worst sadness of all,” Ana says. Namely, the stories of the matriarchs in the Scriptures who have been cast to the shadows.

Ana, who faces her own tragedies, rises to that challenge again and again.Īfter her aunt’s arrival, Ana starts to think of her own parchments and scrolls she tucks away in her cedar chest less as her “audacities” and more as the contributions she wishes to leave for posterity. By reassembling her life – however broken - according to her own design. The advice she gives to Ana is that all will be well. While this novel contains the historical rather than theological Jesus as a character, it is really the story of his fictional wife, Ana. Yaltha is indeed a fascinating character, who sees and experiences tragedy but refuses to be victimized. The tale surrounding the discovery of the works is fascinating in its own right. ' Narrated by a female divinity, the poem is one of over 50 ancient texts that were found near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. Her mind was an immense feral country that spilled its borders. Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Book of Longings was in part inspired by a work entitled ' The Thunder, Perfect Mind. Yaltha, too, is a gift, about whom Ana says: “Unlike my mother, unlike every woman I knew, my aunt was educated.

It is not until her Aunt Yaltha comes to live with her - bestowing on the girl all the warmth lacking in her mother - that Ana starts to see her intelligence not as an accident but as a gift from God. “My father suggested that while God was busy knitting me together in my mother’s womb, He’d become distracted and mistakenly endowed me with gifts destined for some poor baby boy.” “A child as awkward as I required an explanation,” Kidd writes, describing Ana’s rebellious nature and early conflict with gender norms. From childhood, Ana had always been different, having developed a love of writing and a longing to make her voice heard.

The book of longings a novel