Sarah: A Novel, by Marek Halter (1st in the Canaan Trilogy)

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I love reading what people imagine into people from the Bible. This one certainly goes down a path I never ever would have expected. In Halter’s mind, Sarai is of wealthy birth of a court family in Ur. She is supposed to marry as soon as she begins menstruating, but out of fear she runs away, meets a foreigner named Abram in the swamps around the city and then takes poison that nearly kills her and makes her barren. So instead of married life, she enters the life of a fertility priestess…?? Yes.

Years later, she catches up with Abram who rescues her from her (pretty comfortable) life in the temple and drags her all over kingdom come in his quest to do what his God has told him to do. Meanwhile, although she obviously can’t get pregnant, she and Abram share a healthy interest in one another, helped along by the fact that she doesn’t age. Her beauty never diminishes or really changes. Until she gives over to her husband’s God ultimately, and as the wrinkles and lines appear, so does her pregnancy.

In spite of all the pretty wacky plot twists—admittedly, the story is pretty much centered on the Bible story after this outlandish beginning—one really gets the sense of Sarai as a person. Not as an icon, not as a moral icon toward which to aspire. As a living woman who makes some pretty awful choices, and is stubborn. Really stubborn. Especially about accepting unconditional love. For her, everything has a price, including—maybe for her, most obviously—love.