Eva Etzioni-Halevy

As the novel opens, Osnath, the 15-year-old niece of the prophet Samuel, arrives in Bethlehem with her grandmother to visit relatives. There, in a scroll room, she finds a scrap of parchment hinting at an illicit love affair involving Ruth the Moabite. (The wife of wealthy Boaz, Ruth is perhaps best known as the great-grandmother of David, future king of Israel and notorious slayer of Goliath.) Ruth's descendants, especially her great-grandson Eliab,...