Today, we present the second book in our series on best-selling books for the reader on your holiday gift list.
Pulitizer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks takes on one of the richest and most enigmatic figures in history: King David, as she brings history and legend together in The Secret Chord.
Parts of the book are violent, and Brooks tells us how she feels about that.
You can hear more from Brooks here:
With more than two million copies of her novels sold, New York Times-bestselling author Geraldine Brooks has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Now, in perhaps her most ambitious novel yet, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of People of the Book and March takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: King David, a man who shimmers between history and legend.
Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage. Brooks’ primary narrator is David’s counselor and friend the prophet Natan who sets down the best and worst of David: the light and the dark, the betrayals, deaths, kindness, baseness, and soaring above all, the unparalleled music that he created.
THE SECRET CHORD provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, which have been neglected. We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his mother, Nizevet, his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age and who will eventually be crowned King himself—but not without fratricide and treason.