The Book of Longings

“I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth. I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder” (3). So Ana begins her story. Her story begins when she is 14. She lives in the bustling city of Sepphoris. Her father is a high-ranking scribe in the court of Herod Antipas, the Roman governor of Galilee. That makes him and Ana’s family part of the much-loathed Roman military occupation. Ana has grown up in privilege. Her education is beyond most Jewish girls her age. She finds her deepest satisfaction in writing. Her current project is writing the forgotten stories of the prominent women in the Old Testament. No one has ever told their lives, she tells her sympathetic Aunt Yaltha. “To be ignored, to be forgotten, this was the worst sadness of all” (5). In her bedroom is a chest full of her parchment scrolls. Her mother thinks Ana’s obsession is evidence of demonic possession; her father encourages his daughter. Ana grew up with an older cousin, Judas Iscariot, sent to live with the family after his father was part of a failed Jewish insurrection against Rome.