The Red Tent (Extra book)

This was a recommendation from a few friends (Deb and Emily) so I thought I should pick it up. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is a story of a female named Dinah, chronicling her family and her life.  As I started to listen to it (yes, I listened and didn’t read this one), I noted that this is clearly a good “book club” type of read, probably leaning more to female groups rather than males.  Ah yes, a “chicklit” book set fifteen hundred years before Christ was born in the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rooted in the biblical story of the house of Jacob.  The Red Tent is the place where the women congregated away from the male members of the family for purposes of menstruating, hence the color choice.  The book is told in the first person of the narrator, Dinah, the only daughter of a family with twelve boys, with four mothers of course – remember this was set in a time where men had multiple wives, in this case four.  There is much sadness throughout the life of Dinah that does produce a few real tears.  The author draws the readers in right from the outset with the historical setting and the history of how Dinah’s father (Jacob) chose his wife Leah, and the three sisters (Rachel – Dinah’s mother, and Zilpah and Bilhah).  The turning point in the family occurs when Dinah is of age to be betrothed to be married and meets the prince of Schechem, who immediately falls head over heels for Dinah.  When Dinah’s family feels she has been “defiled” by the prince, the men of Dinah’s family raise the dowry “ask,” which the prince’s family agrees.  Soon after the wedding, the brothers kill the prince, which sets off years of Dinah hiding her identity so as not to be killed.  Her hatred for her father and brothers grows deeply for killing her husband.  Dinah does get pregnant from the prince before his sudden death.  She escapes to Egypt and her son is given to the heiress of the country and Dinah serves as a “second mother,” rarely seeing her son.  The story takes an interesting twist of reconnecting to her past after serving as a renowned midwife (and kind of predicted this was going to happen) when we didn’t hear much about her “twin” Joseph.   Dinah’s struggles and hard life capture the plight of women in the culture at the time, and in some areas of the world continue today.  Who couldn’t be moved by this biblical story?  Good read, thanks Deb!