As the story unfolds, her characters near perfectly portray the values, the assumptions, the hopes, and the expectations of now. In The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd paints a monochromatic spiritual landscape, tediously rehearsing the contours of feminine longing. By which I do not mean the ancient time of Jesus, but our age, our time - the twenty-first century. As such, she is the ideal heroine for such a time as this. She is fourteen years old, literate, precocious, full to the brim of longing to know and accept herself. It is the first century and Ana is the daughter of the chief scribe of Herod Antipas. Ana, who (spoiler alert) becomes his wife after suitable trials and tribulations, has tumbled to the ground in a near faint in the marketplace of Sepphoris where she has just been affianced by her father to an elderly, repulsive scoundrel. Thick knuckles, calluses, his palm a terrain of hardships.” 1 This is the moment Jesus enters the narrative of Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel, The Book of Longings. “He reached out his hand, a laborer’s hand. **Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for The Book of Longings: A Novel **
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