Why I Wrote The Flower of Canaan
When people ask about my first novel, The Flower of Canaan, I tell them it takes place centuries before Jesus in the ancient land of Canaan. I see the questions in their eyes. Why so long ago? And where’s Canaan?
Well, as often happens, there’s the story behind the story.
Mine begins not in the 13th century BCE but in the 1940s, with my mother Doris. Born a natural beauty in rural Idaho in 1921, Doris grew with a lively and playful spirit, in vivid contrast to the scrub life of her immigrant parents struggling to get by, especially when the Depression came. Her spirit inevitably conflicted with the stern, repressive fundamentalist religion of her family. When her father forced her to drop out of high school to work, she met a handsome, charismatic lad and fell for the promises he would never deliver. When Doris wouldn’t let him have the pleasure he sought, he forced himself on her. She became pregnant. When the pastor told her that it’s the woman’s responsibility not to tempt a man, she felt forced to marry Willis.
I’ve often thought about her loneliness and despair when the rapes continued after the birth of her first child Merry, soon after Willis’s initial charms gave way to beatings, when he made her become the only breadwinner, when she became pregnant again with me. Abortion was an unthinkable sin, not to mention illegal. Shortly after I was born, little Merry, her beloved daughter, died from pneumonia. How isolated Doris must have felt, undermined by religious beliefs asserting that women, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, are responsible for the evils and trials besetting mankind!
Finally, Doris had enough. She defied her pastor and family and sued Willis for divorce, another “sin” in the eyes of her religion.
Doris
When I was 21, still unaware of the full story of what he had done to my mother, I met Willis. It took me only a few moments to know that Mom would always be my hero. Her courage to act saved me from being raised by a deceitful, dreadful man. She saved herself, too.
My first thought was to tell her story. But I’ve been long troubled by how some religions promote ancient, hateful beliefs — beliefs that shame and weaken rather than give hope, inspiration, and strength.
It has been over 3,000 years women have suffered from these kinds of beliefs! Yet during that time, we’ve shed a lot of beliefs that no longer serve us well, haven’t we? Almost no one believes that the sun revolves around the Earth anymore.
But the belief that a woman is responsible for what a man does to her endures. (I read another example of this only three days ago, May 10, 2024, in the New York Times.) While we’ve largely outlawed buying and selling women, somewhere today a young woman is being told, “Honey, the fact that you’re pregnant now is solely your responsibility, girl.” My mother’s young struggle in the 1940s is a story of women of every age.
Some wonderful qualities of life come down to us from the Middle East. But we must choose to throw off beliefs that abuse and defile, lead to hate and violence, and degrade us. Those have as little value and relevance today as believing that the sun revolves around the earth.
Canaan is a land and people mentioned several times in stories told in the Old Testament. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all spring from Canaan, a land that roughly covers an area still hotly contested and troubled to this day, as evidenced by the endless struggles in Israel and the surrounding territories. While those stories can and do inspire us in positive ways, they also challenge us to do even better than they could in the Late Bronze Age.
The Flower of Canaan is the story of a beautiful young woman, Anat, groomed by her father for sale to the highest bidder, as it was the law then that women were bought and sold. When Anat is sold to a cruel and undeveloped man — a man like my father over 3,000 years later —, her ordeal is only beginning. To find out how she not only survives but triumphs, and saves their son, you must read her inspirational story, which will be out in 2025.
Now is the time when everyone must examine what they’ve been told to believe and apply critical thinking. We need it now more than ever.
— Tim Flood, May 13, 2024
Map by Arnon Moscona, 2024