Noah's Wife Paperback – August 17, 2011

Noah’s Wife by T.K. Thorne is a 369-page novel selected as an OnlineBookClub Book of the Day for 25 February 2017. The Kindle edition is available from Amazon for USD 1.99 but there is a free sample. After reading the sample I couldn't resist buying the complete novel. For those who tend to click on things too fast (buy buttons) be careful here. There are two novels with the same title if you search on Amazon. This is the one with the cover that looks like big waves are coming. The other one, Noah's Wife by Lindsay Starck has people with umbrella's on the cover and costs a lot more.A reader's immediate expectation is that we are going to read about a flood. It is no spoiler to mention that we will but it is a long way (pages) from the following opening two-sentence paragraph to the flood. "My name, Na’amah, means pleasant or beautiful. I am not always pleasant, but I am beautiful. Perhaps that is why I am trundled atop this beast like a roll of hides for market and surrounded by grim-faced men." (p. 1)That sentence is why I couldn't resist buying the book. This sentence appears in the prologue with the title 5521 BCE.After the prologue, we shift back in time with Part I titled 5524 BCE followed by Part II titled 5521 BCE (like the prologue) and finally Part III titled 5500 BCE. This is followed by a highly informative 10-page postscript detailing the author's research underlying the historical part of this fine historical fiction work. That is followed by a glossary of character names which appeared too late for me. Although I would appreciate a glossary appearance at the front of the novel, it would detract from the value of an Amazon sample.Each part describes a significant period of her life when dramatic events happen. In part one, Na'amah deals with Asperger's Syndrome. Her brother, Tubal, despises her and constantly tells her she is ugly and stupid. She is convinced she killed her mother with her birth. Tubal reinforces this idea every time he speaks to her. She does have a loving grandmother whose role becomes more important after her father dies while attempting to flee from a flood. Not THE flood, but a devastating one nevertheless for Na'amah's village.In part one Na'amah will become quite familiar and comfortable with Yanner, a friend with whom she will spend a lot of time in hills while tending sheep. There probably will not be a romantic relationship with Yanner. Na'amah will not encourage it. She is betrothed to Noah in a marriage arranged by her father. Noah has promised to wait several years before consummation of the marriage. It would be nice for Na'amah to get through puberty first. Noah is a lot older than Na'amah but is impressed by her direct speaking style. It seems she cannot lie and she tells Noah what she thinks of him upon their first meeting.After Tubal becomes the head of the family upon the death of their father, Tubal notices that Yanner seems to love his ugly sister. Tubal may or may not hate Noah, but it was Tubal's father that arranged Na'amah's marriage to Noah, a marriage that Na'amah seems to accept. Tubal hates Na'amah and Yanner is Tubal's friend. Tubal decides to make a change to the arrangement and promises Yanner Na'amah as his wife. This is done more out of his hatred for Na'amah rather than a fondness for his friend. This conflict between Na'amah and her brother will lead to her running away from her village. It will lead to her capture by slavers. They want to sell her and other captured women to their King. She will escape from the slavers and try to reach the refuge of a religious sect that worships a supreme power that is female,Up to this point, there are no spoilers because by the title of the book readers can be confident that she escaped from the slavers and that Noah is the ultimate winner in the relationship department. After this point, spoilers become a problem.This novel has a character driven story of the competition for believers in a true religion. Is the true religion patriarchal or matriarchal as far as legitimacy? Tubal fights many followers from the matriarchal camp. Na'amah is not interested in either being in power or acting as a power broker.The book has interesting insights into building a really big boat. Noah uses methods of construction innovative at the time. An interior fireplace on a wooden boat was new. The attention paid to sealing material and the need for frequent maintenance is interesting. Notes on diversity in agricultural methods and distribution were interesting. Different results achieved by different groups living comparatively closely together might have encouraged socialization as one group discovered, perhaps through traveling trade shows and merchants, that the neighbors were a bit better off.There are many interesting comments on peripheral supporting information that are provided as bonus entertainment. The frequent referral to cave paintings could have been left out entirely but the inclusion contributes a lot to how some of the characters support their beliefs.This is a thoughtful read, something not to be rushed, and something the reader may want to come back to, especially when referring sections to friends.This may not be suitable for strict, orthodox believers of the Christian religion who believe in a literal meaning of every word in the Bible.

I loved how TK Thorne transports you into biblical times giving the feminine its due. The book is beautifully written, engaging to the head, heart and spirit. The character of Noah's wife is so well developed as a woman with special gifts. This is a must read!!

Na’amah is born into violence, a violence that takes her mother’s life in childbirth, engenders an animosity with her brother, and isolates her from her village community. Considered damaged and wounded with a head misshaped by childbirth, Na’amah is noticeably different from the other children.Resistant to the physical touch of anyone other than her beloved grandmother Savta, Na’amah cannot gaze into others’ eyes directly or interpret nonverbal cues. She has difficulty lying and often blurts what she is thinking before considering the repercussions. She is physically beautiful yet slight of statue and is often the target of brutal jokes and jibes, led sadly by her own brother Tubal, who carries a mysterious hatred of her.But Na’amah understands and loves animals, especially sheep, and is happiest when she is in the hills watching over them. She knows that one day, after her blood flows, she will be married and assigned the task of cooking, weaving, mending, and caring for a house and children; yet she finds no interest in these domestic tasks and wishes only to be outdoors with her sheep.At market when she is around twelve, Na’amah meet Bennu, a bird “white like an egret, but with a sharp, overjutting top beak” that sits cramped in a small cage. Na’amah gets too close to the bird and causes a crash that breaks open the cage, and Bennu gets out. With its clipped wings, however, it is unable to escape and in frustration alights on Na’amah’s shoulder, its talons digging into her flesh.She feels a man’s gaze and turns. Before her stands a very large man with blue eyes, a large hooked nose and full lips, a “wild bramble of hair and beard,” and a “stink of his body . . . strong enough to rise above the general odor of animals and men.” She has met Noah.Noah arrives at her house a few days later, bearing Bennu as a gift, and with her father negotiates a betrothal for Na’amah, promising to wait three years before its consummation to allow the young Na’amah to grow into womanhood.Na’amah does not wish to be betrothed, and we watch as she struggles to grow up under the torments of Tubal that intensify after her father’s death. To spite her, when Tubal takes over as head of the house, he rejects Na’amah’s betrothal to Noah and violently delivers her instead to Yanner, Na’amah’s childhood friend who has for a long time secretly loved Na’amah.Na’amah escapes and runs to Noah, but Tubal and his posse follow her there and assault Noah. Na’amah escapes again and flees, but she is captured by slavers and is carried off on the back of an aurochs toward a distant land.The Genesis story (King James Version) describes Noah’s world as “…the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” But were there no people who were kind and sought to live in peace? What about Noah’s wife and the family from which she came? She is given no name and is barely mentioned in Genesis.In Noah’s Wife, T.K. Thorne breathes life into this forgotten wife and mother, whom she names Na’amah, a name accepted by many Hebrew historians. There is violence and idol worship and ungodliness in Na’amah’s world, but here we find a young girl who wants to live simply and in a world of non-lies. We follow her through a dangerous world as she journeys and eventually reunites with Noah as he builds her a “boat-house.” And yes, we do finally see a menagerie of beasts and a great flood, but this story is not about the flood or Noah.This is about a brave young girl named Na’amah.

I enjoyed reading this novel, especially because of the writing style. This author's writing style flows so smoothly and has such a feather-light touch that I soon became engrossed in the story and forgot that it was a story.For the writing style alone, I would award this five stars (or more, of more were available).The plot is also great, a how-it-might-have-been historical tale loosely inspired by the Bible (but not a Biblical tale).What separates this novel from a masterpiece is the characterisation. Sadly, the character development is shallow.The villain of the story (the heroine's brother) is a common bully, a cardboard cut-out stereotype, with no real individual personality.The heroine's second love interest, who could potentially have been a great tragic character, also lacks individual personality. He functions in his role, but seems devoid of real character.The heroine's husband, Noah, starts out as a real character - an introvert loner who chooses to live outside of the village so he doesn't have to endure the constant closeness of other people - but even this character trait dilutes halfway through the story. He eagerly invites more and more people to live in his house, something no introvert would do, at least not eagerly and without reluctance. By the end of the novel, the individual character of Noah has vanished completely, and he is as personality-less and bland as the rest of the cast.The only character who comes across as a real person is the heroine. She's a properly developed individual. If the other characters were equally developed, this could be a great novel.For characterisation, I give this book three stars.I was puzzled to see tigers in Africa, something inconsistent with geology and biology as I know it. Although since the story is set before the Biblical flood, I'm willing to make allowances and assume that there were tigers in Africa at the time until the flood drowned them.Something which irritated me a lot was an animal called the 'auroch'. Presumably, this is meant to be the 'aurochs', with the last letter deleted. Why the 's' at the end is deleted, I don't know - either the author thought that 'aurochs' is the plural and just didn't bother with spell-checking and research, or maybe the author was making an artistic statement (which I confess I don't understand).There are other animals in the novel, but the author doesn't lop off their last letters for artistic statements: the fish isn't a fis, the goat isn't a goa, and even the tiger isn't a tige. It's only the aurochs which is mutilated.Other readers may not mind this, but for me, it was seriously irritating. Each time an 'auroch' entered the novel, I felt jolted out of story, and it spoilt my otherwise great enjoyment.With deeper character development and conventional spelling, 'Noah's Wife' could have been a masterpiece.

A truly wonderful book meant to promote free thinking, inspiration and questioning the world around us. The main characters strengths while suffering a form of autism in a biblical time where it was seen as a deformity, were truly admirable. A great book and will read it again one day.