Have you ever wondered how the siblings of Jesus felt during His ministry? Daughter of Cana by Angela Hunt explores this perspective.
Daughter of Cana Review
Daughter of Cana is written from the perspective of Tamsin, twin sister of Thomas, and Jude, Jesus’s brother. The author begins with the wedding in Cana and follows Jesus’ ministry from that point.
I found the Daughter of Cana somewhat disconcerting. It was told from the perspective of eyewitnesses and stories heard by Jude and Tamsin.
While the book stuck closely to the biblical narrative, I read it feeling like I was stuck on the outside looking in. While I’m fairly new to biblical fiction, this book wasn’t as immersive as I have come to expect. The two characters spent much of their time chasing Yeshua and his disciples. I was also very uncomfortable about Tamsin’s attachment to her brother. The secret that bonded them together when finally revealed was implausible (sorry, I can’t say any more without revealing spoilers).
My impression of this book was a lot of walking. In my opinion, the time spent walking could have been used to mull over the stories they had heard about Yeshua which would have made their conversion more natural (technically, that wasn’t a spoiler because everyone knows that Jude eventually became a disciple of Christ).
Still, it was interesting to imagine how it may have felt to be one of Jesus’s siblings especially when you didn’t believe He was the Son of God. The anger, resentment, fear, and a whole truckload of emotions must have been hard to handle.
It was also interesting to imagine Thomas’s twin, why wasn’t his sibling listed among the twelve? The perspective in this novel is that the sibling wasn’t a disciple. Daughter of Cana expressed the full gamut of emotion that a sibling would feel if they were left behind.
Daughter of Cana is worth reading if you’ve ever wondered how the siblings of Jesus felt about his ministry. It’s a conjecture of what it feels like to be on the outside looking in…coming close to the Saviour but not believing. After finishing the book I was determined to reread the Gospels to experience the ministry of Christ for myself…and that is an awesome result of reading biblical fiction.
Get your copy of Daughter of Cana. I received a copy of Daughter of Cana from the publisher through NetGalley; a positive review was not required.
About Daughter of Cana
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Thomas and Tasmin, twin siblings hired to oversee a wedding feast in Cana, worry when the host runs out of wine . . . until a guest tells Tasmin to have the servants fill the pitchers by the gate with water from the cistern. Reluctantly, she obeys–and is amazed when rainwater turns into the finest wine ever tasted in Cana.
When Thomas impulsively decides to follow the teacher from Nazareth, the twins argue bitterly. Tasmin refuses to be abandoned or to let her brother be taken in by a magician-prophet. When he departs anyway, she decides to follow the Nazarene’s group, aided by Jude, younger brother to Yeshua of Nazareth, and do whatever she must to mend the fractured relationship, reveal the truth, and bring her brother home.
About Angela Hunt
The author of more than 100 published books and with nearly 5 million copies of her books sold worldwide, Angela Hunt is the New York Times bestselling author of The Note, The Nativity Story, and Esther: Royal Beauty.
Romantic Times Book Club presented Angela with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. In 2008, Angela completed her Ph.D. in biblical studies in theology. She and her husband live in Florida with their mastiffs.
She can be found online at www.angelahuntbooks.com.
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