Judith Starkston has spent too much time exploring the remains of the ancient worlds of the Greeks and Hittites. Their myths and clashes inspire her fiction and open gates to magical realms. She has degrees in Classics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Cornell. She loves myths and telling stories, and her novels imbue fantasy with the richness of ancient worlds. The first book in her Trojan Threads Series, Hand of Fire was a semi-finalist for the M.M. Bennett’s Award for Historical Fiction. Priestess of Ishana, the first in her historical fantasy Tesha series, won the San Diego State University Conference Choice Award. Judith is represented by Richard Curtis.
“You are a woman and think like one. You know nothing at all.” So, in a Hittite myth, says a very grouchy husband to his wife when she has asked yet again about his inability to get her pregnant. Does this show that Hittite men had a decidedly low view of women?
In the Hittite law codes a woman could both initiate a divorce and keep her inheritance and half her husband’s estate if she divorced. On the other hand, the expressions used in Hittite for marriage—there is no one abstract word for “to marry”—reflect the control men exercised over women, “to take a wife” “to take as his own wife” “to make her your wife.” The laws of adultery and rape present a similarly mixed bag.
In the Hittite world the hasawa served many essential roles. Using the sacred stories of myth, she brought the human and divine worlds back into harmony. She performed rites to “cure” family quarrels, disease, and injury. She made divinations to read the will of the gods and she delivered babies.
One way to see how a society views women is to examine its leaders. Are women included and, if they are, to what extent? Both the Hittite and Mycenaean world had powerful queens, in particular: Queen Puduhepa and Queen Helen of Sparta
This article discusses the lives of Hittite and Mycenaean women and the wide range of work they performed, including powerful landowning priestesses and skilled artisans. It also examines the relative wages of men and women in the Hittite and Mycenaean worlds.
A lovely article about how writing a novel can be a lot like having a baby by Ann Brashares, author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Happy Mother’s Day, a bit late!
Amy Dominy’s book isn’t my usual historical fiction, but many of my subscribers know Amy or the Speech and Debate team she based her book on–Desert Vista’s very own champions, so here is a review lots of you will care about.This debut young adult novel, OyMG will warm your heart and make you laugh out loud whether you are 13 or 53. With the precision of a stand-up comedian, Dominy hits every hilarious beat in the stressed-out world of high school speech and debate. With equal precision she portrays the confused inner world of fourteen year old Ellie, a Jewish girl who really wants to win a scholarship to Benedict’s high school, and thinks a Christian speech camp is the way to her goal. But maybe her Zeydeh’s got it right–you have to stand by who you really are.
C.S. Harris’s mystery Where Shadows Dance set in London in 1812 will keep you guessing until the very end. When a surgeon buys a body for his medical students to dissect, he hardly expects to step into the middle of a murder case. But as Sebastian St. Cyr tries to solve the case, the dead bodies keep appearing and even his fiancée is a suspect.
Jewell Parker Rhodes’s latest mystery in her Marie Laveau series, Hurricane, is a spell-binding mystery infused with an inspiring take on what womanhood can be in all its aspects. Hurricane Katrina may be the least of Marie’s problems as she faces a miasma of confusing ancient spirits, a murdered family, powerful oil companies, and a curiously ill town.
A wide-ranging interview with author Bruce Macbain about his mystery Roman Games and the historical background of it–from the exotic cult of Isis to parallels between Roman sensibilities and contemporary American life.
