Customer Reviews

The Deeper Song

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I am currently researching and writing a novel based only 200 years earlier than this novel in this area of the world. I have been doing extensive research on this entire era and find most of Pfitsch's assumptions annoyingly, provably false.
Here are a few thoughts from only the first couple of chapters:

Untrue:
1. That Ashterah is a wooden pillar. Rather it is a tree that is pruned and worshipped.
2. That Solomon didn't pay his workers and most people starved while he basked in luxury. Even if that were true why would, even she, say that the people loved him?
3. That women didn't know how to read. From the numerous pottery shards that contain day-to-day lists and notes from women's lives it is obvious that most people - including women - knew how to read and write.
4. That the father had life and death power over his household. -Even the law was contrary to this! This is what Judges were for - and nothing could be decided without at least two witnesses and a minimum of three judges.
5. That Judaism was a "male" religion. The names Adonai and Elohim (translated as G-d and L-rd) are indeed masculine, but how often do you hear that "His" name Yah is actually feminine!
6. I would like to know what she calls yogurt since I have found nothing even remotely similar to modern yogurt in this time period in my research.
7. That the prayer men pray thanking G-d that they were not made a woman was derogatory to women! Men are required to do a lot more than a woman is and it is considered an honor. The point is that men are thanking G-d for the extra obligations because there is greater reward for observance when it is required of you (because it goes against our nature) then when it is optional. We women thank G-d for making us "who we are" because we don't have to do all those things and can focus our efforts on taking care of our family, home, job, etc.

True:
1. Handmaidens (yes, slaves) were foreigners and sometimes influenced the people they served to worship other gods.
2. Worshiping the "queen of heaven" was common (Ishtar from which the word "Easter" originates).

Unfortunately, the author has stong feminist prejudices. I did not bother finishing the book because the inaccuracies and the vehemence with which the author seems to believe them were too annoying.

If you are a Jew or a Christian, you will probably have major problems with this work.

Patricia Curtis Pfitsch's THE DEEPER SONG is a wonderful young adult novel that provides the reader with a both an engaging story and a sense of life in Biblical (or pre-Biblical) times. Rooted in research, but expanded by the author's willingness to ask questions about what life would have been like for women (and men) in ancient times, the book is alive and provocative.

Contemporary readers will find the characters compelling and interesting. The historical "what-ifs" (see the author's note at the back of the book) provide a fascinating perspective on life, gender roles, and the importance of storytelling. For young adults, who struggle to find ways to tell their own stories (in journals, diaries, conversation), this will be a book of great interest because the message is that we all tell stories in order to work out ideas and communicate our experiences. Storytelling is thousands of years old; it's how we make sense of life. And this is what THE DEEPER SONG is all about.

Readers should also look for Pfitsch's other YA novels--KEEPER OF THE LIGHT and RIDING THE FLUME--both of which deal with strong female protagonists and their struggles in other historical time periods. As a father who is always looking for good books for my own middle-school-age children, I would recommend all three of Pfitsch's novels.

This book wonderfully showed how being a teenaged girl in biblical times was like. It is about a girl, Judith, who's father is a priest. He strongly believes in God. Judith doesn't feel accepted in her father's religion because of the way women are treated (badly), and she secretly follows the religion of the Goddess. Judith is very good at storytelling, and is asked by her cousin, a priest-in-training, to write the stories of the bible (this was before the bible existed). This is Judith's chance to give women more power in her father's religion. Women were treated like crap back then, and so to give them power Judith wrote about them as powerful and wonderful people in her stories. This is a really great book for teens today. There isn't another one like it. After reading this book I had a better understanding of what it was like to be a women in biblical times.