The Book of Longings

In creating a first-person narrative of the wife of Jesus Christ, veteran novelist Sue Monk Kidd acknowledged that The Book of Longings (2020) was controversial, even incendiary. Little is known about the 33 years of the life of the Hebrew religious philosopher, social activist, and political agitator known today as Jesus, save the last three years of his public ministry. That he might have taken a wife, as was customary, and might have had a family wider than the iconic figures of his parents Mary and Joseph has for two millennia been dismissed by Christian thinkers as unfounded and heretical. Part meticulously researched historical fiction and part provocative feminist theological speculation, The Book of Longings is supremely a love story between Jesus ben Joseph, an itinerant stonemason and part-time carpenter from Nazareth, and Ana, a feisty, willful, passionate, privileged, and well-educated daughter of a well-placed scribe in Herod’s occupational government in Galilee, an aspiring writer who is profoundly frustrated by the limited opportunities for women to express themselves. The Book of Longings, a New York Times best seller, earned critical plaudits for both its historical realism and for its daring premise that Christ and his ministry were shaped at least in part from his relationship with a woman he loved very much not as a God but as a man. If true, that would make the wife of Jesus the most present absence in recorded human history.

This study guide uses the 2020 Viking hardcover edition.

Plot Summary

Kidd divides the novel into five sections based on where Ana lives: Sepphoris in central Galilee; Nazareth; Alexandria, Egypt; Jerusalem; and Lake Mareotis in Egypt.

The novel begins in Sepphoris, where 14-year-old Ana, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of Matthias (the head scribe to Herod Antipas, the Roman governor of Galilee), enjoys a privileged upbringing in court. She lives shielded from the harsh realities of the Roman occupation of the Jewish lands. Unlike most girls of her time, Ana has an education, is well-read and well-versed in the classics of Antiquity. With her father’s encouragement and the support of her paternal aunt Yaltha, Ana developed a keen love of storytelling. Now, she aspires to be a writer, despite the social conventions that denied women opportunities to express themselves in writing. Ana grew up with Judas Iscariot, an orphaned cousin who is more like an older brother to her. Judas is active in the underground movement opposed to Roman occupation.

Knowing that Ana is now child-bearing age, her mother spearheads the effort to secure a lucrative marriage for her only daughter. Ana meets the rich elderly man her parents have arranged for her to marry the same day she happens to meet an itinerant 18-year-old stonemason who is working on one of Herod’s massive building projects. The two fall immediately in love. He introduces himself as Jesus ben Joseph from Nazareth. Later, Ana cannot forget the man. She finds the old man her parents have selected repellant as she tells her only friend, Tabitha, a gifted singer also promised to marriage. When Tabitha accuses a Roman soldier of raping her, however, her parents, fearing the wrath of the Romans, punish her severely; her father cuts her tongue out.

Ana understands her private library of scrolls upon which she has written stories about the forgotten women in the Old Testament is threatened by her fast-approaching wedding. With Yaltha’s help, she hides the scrolls in a cave outside of the city. While there, she meets Jesus again. The two share confidences. She tells him of her dreams of being a writer. She learns he is an outcast, that the town of Nazareth condemned his mother for having a child out of wedlock. He tells Ana that he misses his father but that he feels called to some great mission, that he now thinks of God as his father.

When a fever grips the city and kills Ana’s betrothed, Ana believes it a sign. Because she does not mourn sufficiently, her family upbraids her. When she declines Herod’s offer to become his concubine, Ana is the subject of vicious gossip about her unconventional lifestyle. Only the intervention of Jesus prevents a mob from stoning her to death. Jesus impulsively proposes marriage and asks Ana to come with him to Nazareth.

For the next 10 years, Jesus and Ana live with Jesus’s family: his widowed mother, the gentle Mary, and his two brothers and sister. Ana wants to pursue her writing but domestic work is difficult and time-consuming. The family lacks the money for writing supplies. Ana and Jesus suffer a miscarriage. Ana is heartbroken, and for a time abandons her writing.

Jesus is away most of the time because of his work. During his travels, Jesus interacts with the radical religious movement led by a fiery preacher known only as John the Immerser. The movement endorses the overthrow of the Romans as the first step in establishing God’s kingdom on earth. Approaching 30, Jesus confides in Ana that he feels he needs to be part of the movement, that he has a message that God is not judgmental and angry but rather that God is love. When Herod arrests John and issues a warrant for Ana, Jesus understands Ana must flee. He tells her he must begin his own preaching mission and that she must remain safe. She and her aunt head to the relative freedom and safety of Alexandria in Egypt where Yaltha once lived.

Alexandria’s culture and diversity amaze Ana. Yaltha reunites with a daughter she abandoned years ago, while Ana studies with a group of women-scholars in a small commune outside of the city before learning of her husband’s arrest in Jerusalem. Judas arranged to have Jesus arrested because he’s certain that if the Romans execute Jesus because of his Messiah claims, the Jews will revolt and throw out the Romans.

Ana returns to Jerusalem. She watches helplessly as her husband receives torture and execution by order of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. Along with her mother-in-law, she grieves at the foot of the bloody cross. Still wanted by Herod, she cannot linger. Early the following day, Sunday, she and Tabitha flee to Yaltha in Alexandria.

Over the next two years, living in the women’s commune of the Therapeutae, Ana composes what will become her defining work, The Thunder: Perfect Mind, a book of poetry and meditations about her time with Jesus. Jesus visits her in what she assumes is a dream and assures her he will never leave her. Even as her husband’s radical message of love and compassion have begun to take shape as a formidable social and political movement, Ana sadly learns the inspirational story of Jesus told by his apostles never mentions a wife. Determined her voice will someday be heard, she buries her writings, including Thunder, in sealed jars in the hills outside Alexandria.