The Flower of Canaan, a novel
The god we see looks back at us as a mirror.
… epigraph
The Flower of Canaan is a saga of the 13th century BC in the ancient land of Canaan.
Anat, a young beauty raised and groomed for sale in a society of harsh, fixed beliefs about women, rebels against the constraints of her culture. David, her young friend, falls under the spell of her unattainable beauty.
In a dual-point-of-view narrative, my novel follows the lives of this young pair, friends since childhood, who hope to marry one day, but are out of step with their times. When their wishes are disregarded, each faces a painful life as fate carries them on separate paths across the land on journeys that ultimately transform them. Their stories, which will appeal to thoughtful men and women alike, strike at the foundational beliefs of Western Civilization and demonstrate the strength of individual spirit to overcome entrenched values and prejudices enduring to this day.
After successfully bargaining with her father for Anat as his wife, the cruel Foreigner preempts David’s passion to marry her, then subjects Anat to his malignant and loveless heart until she risks her life to escape to freedom with their son. Anat’s story of suffering at the hands of a hateful man is one that all too many women have understood for millennia. Yet her triumph over cruelty to transform herself into a compassionate healer of women is inspirational.
The two principal men in the story, David and his nemesis, the Foreigner, tell quite different tales. David idealizes Anat, places her high on a pedestal in his imagination, and confuses physical beauty with love. When he loses her to the Foreigner, he flees in despair to roam the land in a fruitless search for her match. It is only when he meets the magical Ashima that he learns that the love of a real woman is deeper than anything he imagined. In the name of the god he prophesies, the loveless Foreigner treats a woman as a sex object, slave, and chattel.
This powerful story is a parable of turbulent personal struggles to overcome entrenched cultural and religious prejudices to achieve authentic relationships between men and women. It is as applicable today as it was millennia ago.