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. Shirah, born in Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power. The Dovekeepers is the story of four women Aziza, the girl-warrior Shirah, the Witch of Moab Yael, the lioness and Revka, the revenging mother who came. The novel dramatizes the Siege of Masada (7374 CE ) by troops of the Roman Empire towards the end of the First JewishRoman War (6673 CE). According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. In 70 CE, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on a mountain in the Judean desert, Masada. Traces four women, their path to the Masada massacre. Aziza is a warrior's daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and an expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier. The Dovekeepers is a 2011 historical novel by American writer Alice Hoffman. It sits on an enormous rock plateau with steep cliffs that serves as its protection. Blends mythology, magic, archaeology and women. Revka, a village baker's wife, watched the horrifically brutal murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers she brings to Masada her young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed. Yael's mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.

In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert.

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