Four women, Yael--whose father, an expert assassin, has never forgiven her for her mother's death during childbirth--Revka--a local baker's wife who witnessed the murder or her daughter by Roman soldiers--Aziza--a warrior's daughter who was raised like a son--and Shirah--a woman born with uncanny insight and knowledge of ancient magic--are drawn to Masada, a mountain the Judean desert where, in 70 CE, nine hundred Jews withheld for months against...

After a small town librarian survives a lightning strike, she seeks out a fellow survivor in a quest for meaning, only to begin an obsessive love affair between two opposites joined by a single common thread.

"A forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro, the Father of Impressionism"--