The Ark and the Dove

Title: The Ark and The Dove

Author: Jill Eileen Smith

Genre: Historical fiction, Biblical Fiction

Page Count: 336

When done right, Biblical fiction includes some of my favorite books. Jill Eileen Smith does it right! Characters and narrative that drive me back to God's Word for the truth.  "Fan Fiction" of the greatest book in history. The Ark and the Dove is about the flood and focuses mainly on Zara, wife of Noah; however we get glimpses into Noah's life, his sons and his sons' wives.  So often we focus on what this family dealt with prior and during the flood, but I don't know if I ever considered what their lives would have been like after the flood- starting over again. I obviously knew how they saved the animals, but had considered saving literature, tools, methods of building, growing, and creating. 

The novel follows the family from when Noah is told to prepare an ark. Readers meet his two sons and their wives, as the family hurries to find a wife for the third son before everyone turns on them. They try to convince their family and neighbors to return to "the Creator" as they refer to the Lord, but we all know how the story ends.  The novel touches on the grief that each one feels as everything and everyone they know is destroyed.  While I personally think, this could have been a larger aspect of the novel, in this case there were other things going on- other trials and temptations on the ark and on land as they are beginning again.  

What I liked best was the questions that this retelling raised, my imagination was ignited as I thought about the real Noah and his family and what they experienced so many years ago, when God chose them to survive and continue after the flood. This is a book and author that I would highly recommend. Read her fictional stories about real events in the Bible, then open up the Word of God and read the real thing. Learn and speculate what God's people experienced, how they may have felt and reacted to all they lived through.