Yael’s mother died in childbirth, and she knows her father blames her for this, and has always resented her. Yael reflects on the events in Jerusalem where the Romans moved troops into the city to subdue the rebelling Jews, driving her and her father out of their house along with many of their neighbors, leaving Jerusalem empty and abandoned behind them. The story opens with Yael, a young Jewish woman, telling the story of how she came to be wandering the desert with her father, Yosef, and a man named Ben Simon, his wife Sia, and their family. A work of historical fiction, it is set during the first Roman-Jewish War in the first century CE the famous siege of the fortress of Masada is a major component of the plot.

This novel is Alice Hoffman's masterpiece.The Dovekeepers is a novel by Alice Hoffman, published in 2011.

All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets-about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them, and whom they love. The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege, as the Romans draw near. Shirah is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power. Aziza is a warrior's daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and expert marksman, who finds passion with another soldier. Revka, a village baker's wife, watched the horrifically brutal murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers she brings to Masada her twin grandsons, rendered mute by their own witness.

Yael's mother died in childbirth, and her father never forgave her for that death. Based on this tragic historical event, Hoffman weaves a spellbinding tale of four extraordinary, bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom comes to Masada by a different path. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. In 70 C.D., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on a mountain in the Judean desert, Masada. Now, in The Dovekeepers, Hoffman delivers her most masterful work yet-one that draws on her passion for mythology, magic, and archaeology and her inimitable understanding of women. The author of such iconic bestsellers as Illumination Night, Practical Magic, Fortune's Daughter, and Oprah's Book Club selection Here on Earth, Alice Hoffman is one of the most popular and memorable writers of her generation. Over five years in the writing, Alice Hoffman's most ambitious and mesmerizing work ever, a triumph of imagination and research set in ancient Israel.

The dovekeepers novel