WOW! There were a lot of ideas in this book that I already had, and a few that were new to me, but the way that Ms. Beechick weaved together the Biblical account with history and made it easily readable was just amazing. Ive read many books on this time period. Most of them are very scholarly, which definitely has its place, but this was a quick, light, fun read, that was still jam-packed with lots of info. She also includes a great bibliography, so I cant wait to start researching more.
If you ever noticed how quickly the "Prince of this world", through his agents in the media and academia, is able to put a spin on events so that what you saw happen with your own eyes, and heard with your own ears becomes distorted in the historical record beyond all recognition, than you will love and appreciate this book. Ruth Beechick makes a very credible attempt at reconstructing life after "the fall". Necessairily fiction, I find it far more plausible than the "fiction of history" provided for us by generations of so called "intellectuals". The history of the meek is writ small in the present kingdom, but in the Kingdom to come, it will be writ large. As it is written, "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last".
The author is very clear that not every theory about creation or the beginning of human history is used. And thats not the point. It is meant to be a novel of what might have happened. One does not have to buy every theory, but it is still extremely interesting because it "fills in the blanks" of what you might have wondered about the Genesis accounts. It makes sense and I think it makes an excellent companion to Bible study and ancient history study.
