I would love to see more retellings of these stories that are a lot more inclusive and really diving in there and presenting it in a new way. The field of Bible retellings is also very white, and very Christian. Here is a woman torn between faith and fury, lending her strength to her sons and their wives, caring for an unruly menagerie of restless creatures, silently mourning the lover she left behind. When I was making this list, I did notice that a lot of retellings out there leaned on the religious/inspirational side, rather than the general fiction side, although I’ve tried to keep most of the books on the general fiction end - as in, no proselytizing or overly religious text - with more focus on the storytelling aspect. Meet Naamah, Noahs wife, the matriarch who kept her family alive as they drifted on an endless sea. Whose voices don’t we get in the original text that we might get in a retelling? What insights and stories can someone add to the traditional stories? Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the American Poetry Review, and the Kenyon Review. She received a Literature Fellowship from the NEA. And for those who do, more power to you, it just isn’t my thing, but I know many people find solace in it, as well as friendship and community in Bible groups.Īlice Hoffman’s Bible-adjacent (for lack of a better word, since the story of Masada isn’t in the Bible) The Dovekeepers sparked my interest in Biblical retellings and spin-offs, which I find much more compelling. SARAH BLAKE is the author of CLEAN AIR, a cli-fi domestic thriller, NAAMAH, a novel reimagining the story of Noah's ark, and poetry collections MR. When someone dies and you forget how they look or how they laughed, that is how they forgot the land. Even as an adult, I wouldn’t exactly pick up the Bible for fun reading. NAAMAH by Sarah Blake RELEASE DATE: ApA retelling of Noah’s Ark centered around Noah’s wife, Naamahthe woman who helped reshape the world with her hands.

This included reading anything religious. Growing up going to a religious day school, by the time school let out, the last thing I wanted to do was anything religious.

Naamah by Sarah Blake