.Mrs D enjoyed this.

Hello, lucky finder. If you're new to Bookcrossing, thank you for visiting the website.

Please take a moment to let us know you have the book - then everyone who has had it previously can follow it's journey! Then please post a review when you've read it.

If you join BookCrossing (which is FREE, SECURE and SAFE), you too, can see where it goes next..

This book is yours to keep or pass on. No strings attached!

Not released after all. Now travelling to York instead.

Hello, lucky finder. If you're new to Bookcrossing, thank you for visiting the website.

Please take a moment to let us know you have the book - then everyone who has had it previously can follow it's journey! Then please post a review when you've read it.

If you join BookCrossing (which is FREE, SECURE and SAFE), you too, can see where it goes next..

This book is yours to keep or pass on. No strings attached!

Ah no! I didn't want to gather any more books as I'm really trying to read through and reduce the number of books in the house this year. I went to Brigantes today to have lunch and drop off some York BC books. Saw this and was tempted so... six dropped off and one picked up.

This book is essentially giving birth, having periods and having sex in the Old Testament days, so if you're not up to reading about those subjects for whatever reason, it's probably best just to put this book back down and walk away. These are back in the days when women were literally just there for keeping house and popping out kids, so although they get tiresome in that this is all they're interested in; you've got to think that this was literally all they had. I appreciate this has been created around a Biblical character, Dinah, who is only mentioned for a couple of sentances, so this is a work of the author's imagination. But it feels real, and also well done in that she doesn't put any twentieth century attitudes onto the characters. Because let's face it, these are little girls who have just started to bleed being married off to grown men, and getting pregnant really quick. Men take many child wives. Women get sent to the red tent every time they get their period. This book sees it as the great sisterhood getting together and everyone getting a bit of a rest from the household chores, which I suppose it was. But they were sent there because a woman on her period was considered unclean and needed to be shunned away. There are communities in the world where this practice still goes on. So although I appreciate this book is re creating the era, I'm not a fan of some of these practices.

I don't know the Bible, well, I'm not religious, and honestly, the only bits of this tale I'm familiar with I know from Joseph and his Technicoloured Dreamcoat. But I enjoyed the story as historical fiction. We start off before Dinah's birth, learning of her mother, Leah, and her aunts' tale. All four sisters, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bihlal are married to the same man, Jacob. I mean, it must be tough on women who are all married to the same guy with the bitching and infighting, but when the other wives are your sisters as well?! That's tough. Especially when a woman's worth was totally judged on how many sons she's popped out. You see Rachel suffer through this tale. Anyway, Dinah and her many half brothers go through childhood, then as a young teen, she meets a guy she really fancies. And in typical hormonal teenage lust they can't keep their hands off each other. Unfortunately this wasn't agreed with the family in advance, who then acuse the young man of rape. It seems things are settled, but then Dinah's new in laws are butchered by her half brothers, and she has to flee to Egypt with her mother in-law.

A very interesting and believeable imagining of the life of a person barely hinted at in the Bible.

Posting to a bookmoocher in London along with John Wyndham's Consider Her Ways. Enjoy!