A House in the Land of Shinar - Paperback

by Bernadette Miller (Author)

A historical novel set in 3500 B.C. in the Middle East. How a Bedouin Arab's mission to avenge the sacrifice of his beloved, young daughter might have led to the beginning of Judaism.

Devastated by his daughter's death, Tiras grows determined to find a kinder god and save his two sons and his tribe from their vicious priest and terrifying bull-god. Accompanied only by his donkey, he leaves Saudi Arabia and crosses the dangerous Nefud Desert to sophisticated Sumer in southern Iraq. The Sumerian gods, he'd learned during his tribe's migrations, are sympathetic. In Sumer, he meets Mah Ummia, a scholar who teaches Tiras about the country's gods. After numerous adventures and a forbidden love affair, Tiras returns to his tribe with the roots of a new religion. But he struggles to persuade his suspicious tribe to replace their priest and ferocious bull-god with a new, unseen but loving god, and to stop their threats to his family. Should he continue risking his family's life to help the tribe?

"...a captivating, nuanced account...the plot is by turns as gripping as it is moving...a historically impressive work, ..." - Kirkus Reviews

Author Biography

Bernadette Miller earned her bachelor of arts degree at Maryland University and studied fiction writing at New York University and the New School for Social Research. Her short stories have been published in over forty literary magazines, and she read one of her published stories on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. She is working on her fifth historical novel, an unusual love story set in Brooklyn, New York, during the Second World War. She currently lives in New York.