A novel about the history of the Jewish Revolt and the mass suicide at Masada as experienced by and told to Ruth, one of the two women (along with five children) who survived Masada and who intends to write down a balanced account of the events. She is told segments of the story by both Jewish and Roman participants including Flavius Silva, the general who besieged Masada, and Flavius Josephus, the traitorous Jewish general who defected to the Romans and became their apologist. Interspersed with the history is the story of Ruth and her surviving companions and their return to devastated Jerusalem to begin their lives anew. Zealot Sarah, the other woman survivor and Jesse, the Romanized Jew who consorts with and cheats the Romans to aid his devastated countrymen and to atone for his own betrayal are particularly memorable

by Maddalena Colautti-Leonard