The Dovekeepers

The novel is divided into four Parts and an Epilogue, with each section narrated in the voice of one of its four protagonists. The first part is narrated from the first-person point-of-view of Yael and is titled “The Assassin’s Daughter” (3).

Since world-building is the focus in these early chapters, Hoffman uses various details to bring alive the novel’s 70-73-CE setting. Yael’s experiences are told in sensory detail to create a sense of time and place. For instance, when the second Temple is destroyed, Yael describes the sound as “a roar” and the air as rent by “streams of holy dust […] so that [the Jews] inhaled that which was meant to stand throughout eternity” (25). Yael’s arduous trek in the desert is described using imagery that draws on all the senses, such as when she describes the sunlight in the desert as so brutally white that it blinds, and the wind as so strong it can rip a person to pieces.

Yael’s narration is deeply rooted in her awareness of her social status as a woman. Though the story centers around Yael, the title describes Yael only as relative to her father (i.e., “The Assassin’s Daughter”) to reflect the heavily patriarchal world she inhabits. Part of the book’s feminist politics is that all its female protagonists emerge much more than the labels by which they are known, introducing the theme of The Solidarity and Resilience of Women. Yael’s telling is centered around her biology and her social status. When Yael menstruates in the desert, she has no option but to stem the blood with the hem of her torn dress. While a male-centric narrative about war would not focus on such a detail, Hoffman tells the story of war and peril through a female perspective. Yael also observes that in her time, women are not supposed to go to marketplaces unveiled and unaccompanied, such as she does when she goes to the woman who practices magic.

The double standards between men and women are emphasized in the novel in various aspects of life. While men’s magic is seen as holy religion, women’s spells are seen as “the foulest sort of magic […] evil, vengeful, practiced by those who were denounced as witches” (17). When Yael’s mother dies in childbirth, her father irrationally blames the infant and treats Yael cruelly. Even Ben Simon’s relationship with Yael reflects the double standard of her world, as her father blames Yael for seducing the married man, even though Ben Simon is over a decade older than Yael and the father of two children. Furthermore, it is Ben Simon who seeks out Yael and initiates the relationship.

In this male-dominated world, it is women who offer each other kinship and solidarity, as seen in Yael approaching the house of kepashim. The girl who cares for Yael as a toddler is another instance of women nurturing each other. The girl is an important plot point, since the text will later show this is none other than Shirah, one of the other protagonists. The early and casual introduction of Shirah is an example of Hoffman’s use of plotting, the cause-and-effect chain that builds a story. Yael and Shirah’s connection also illustrates the text’s key theme of The Solidarity and Resilience of Women.

The text’s animal symbolism is introduced in this section. While Yael often dreams of a lion and encounters a leopard in the desert, she also befriends a goat and feels an affinity for doves. Yael in particular is associated with animals in the text, much like Shirah is associated with plants. Yael often refers to animals, from gryphon vultures to buntings to skylarks. When Yael kills animals in the desert for sustenance, she does it with a “single cut to allow its spirit to rise in a steady stream of light,” explaining, “we were to show kindness and compassion to all beings, what we call baal chayyim” (45). Baal chayyim refers to the Hebrew prohibition against causing unnecessary pain and suffering to any creature.

Another important textual element is the role of magic in the lives of people, invoking The Interplay Between Faith, Destiny, and Free Will. For Yael and other women like her, the high religion of Adonai and the magic of women are part of the same fabric. People believe in omens, spells, and demons, and the text itself contains many instances of magical realism, the literary style that incorporates magical elements in a realistic setting. For instance, the temple of Jerusalem does fall after the omen of the sword-like star is glimpsed in the sky. The blurred boundary between faith and action, magic and reality, is consistent with the worldview of the time the novel describes, when every natural phenomenon would appear to be a sign or a miracle.

Many characters also grapple with guilt and remorse. Characters in the novel often regret their actions, and feel their loved ones pay the price for their transgressions. Ben Simon believes his children fell ill because of his relationship with Yael. After Yael returns from the oasis and finds Ben Simon’s family dead, she is wracked with remorse over her betrayal of Sia, who was kind to her. However, the text itself does not present any clear moral judgments of the characters, instead presenting them in a more nuanced and ambiguous way. Yael’s love for Ben Simon, for example, is presented as a sincere teenaged infatuation as well as the consequence of the emotional neglect she has faced all her life.

This section showcases Hoffman’s use of figurative language, with Yael’s narrative using similes and metaphors to describe her experiences. When Yael describes the endlessly hot days in the deserts, she says, “the days piled up like twigs, bent and useless” (33). The simile of the twigs evokes the dry, meaningless quality of the time during their difficult journey. Hoffman also uses period-appropriate detail and Biblical imagery to illustrate Yael’s world. For instance, the food Yael and her group eat in the desert is cheese fermented from the milk of their goat and wild fruit like sycamore, which are all period-appropriate. Yael also refers to date palms, olives, doves, honey, myrrh, and grapes, all elements that feature in the famous Song of Solomon in the Bible.