Queenmaker

Have you read Michelle Moran's Nefertiti, Cleopatra's Daughter, or The Heretic Queen? Well, India Edghill's Queenmaker is exactly like those, only set in Biblical Jerusalem instead of pre-Biblical Egypt.

I reached page 4 when I got sucked into the book and realized the King David I was reading about was the David who defeated Goliath with a single stone. Surely, this would be a story of a great man, not like the extra large tool-bags I read about in Moran's fictionally historic novels. The first line: "People say David loved me because I resembled my brother." Ok, so maybe we were reaching into some Alexander with Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie territory. But Edghill writes in such a way that we aren't entirely sure if David is a hero worth his praise or the creepy master manipulator from whence we all originated. Even long after finishing the book, when I encounter references to King David, a mixture of emotions and judgements bubble to the surface and I still can't decide if he was a good man. But maybe that is the point; it's not for me to decide.

Reading about the wife of royalty is always an interesting experience. Like the back of the book boasts, Queen Michal offers up an intense behind-the-scenes, first-hand account of her life as a prisoner of David's love; love for her or himself we're never quite sure. As an impressionable daughter of King Saul, she falls head-over-heels for the enigmatic, dashing stranger, David, brought to Jerusalem to play the harp for the King. He quickly imparts his wisdom on King Saul on how to handle the nation's enemies and approaching conflicts from expertly articulated innocence.

But Future-King David is anything but, slithering his way into Jerusalem's driver's seat by epitomizing the friend that stabs you in the back to your face. Michal is granted her prepubescent wish in becoming his wife, but is forced to live separated from her love. This is when Michal learns the most about her husband, and is faced with the realization that it was nothing more than puppy love and a case of raging adolescent hormones. King David, however, views Michal as a trophy from his first, and most influential, conquest that must shine at his side no matter how dull and jaded it became on the inside. No matter how many other wives he acquired - more than Kings before him - Michal remained his one and only, holding her captive from the man she grew to love in David's absence.

Like all great females of history, Queen Michal was able to extract her revenge, if nothing more than to realize it was David who ultimately suffered the most during his reign.

Edghill expertly captures the essence of Michal, the troublesome girl who grew into an introverted Queen. But her story was bleak and offered happiness in only the most painful of circumstances, something extremely difficult to relate to in this constant I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it culture. But, in that vein, she teaches us how to appreciate every little thing we have because it could be a lot less. Or, like Michal, we could have everything we thought we wanted, but nothing of what we did.