The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At first, I thought it was slow moving and it was definitely not like the other Alice Hoffman's I have read, but I quickly changed my mind on both counts.

Told in the voices of four women, the book is richly inspired by historical events that take place in Masada in the year of 70 C.E. The women are interconnected and there is Hoffman's usual heavy sprinkling of women's power as it is tied into the secrets of the Earth passed on from one woman to another and connected in the minds of men and civilization to the practice of witchcraft.


My favorite quote surprisingly came in her acknowledgements: "Lastly, my greatest debt is to my mother, Sherry Hoffman, who I miss every day. I hope you forgave me, as I have long ago forgiven you."

It made me think as the book does as well, what we do to our mothers as daughters, and what our mothers do to their daughters, that requires to ask forgiveness. I have done this many times in the last four years and half since my mother has died. Women will continue to capture and attempt to explain this most complicated relationship on Earth. I for one as a woman, believe that this relationship is the most important and powerful one on Earth, and what a woman does with the gift that is given to her in the mother-daughter relationship can make or break her success and affect her happiness in this temporal world.




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