The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Geraldine Brooks
• Title: The Secret Chord
• Publisher: ‎ Viking
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover – 302 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0670025771
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0670025770
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.03 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.25 x 0.99 x 9.27 inches
• Book Condition: New / Like New – Excellent
• Dust Jacket Condition: Excellent

Synopsis:

A rich and utterly absorbing novel about the life of King David, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of People of the Book and March.

 

Geraldine Brooks is acclaimed for her ardent imaginative engagement with the blank spaces in history's record. In perhaps her most ambitious novel yet, she reconsiders a man who shimmers between history and legend.

Grounded in the gritty, violent reality of Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks's exploration of a mercurial David reveals a life that arcs from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from brilliant poet, glorious musician, and glamorous young tyrant into an ailing and remorseful old age. Inspired by brief tantalizing biblical references to the lost book of Nathan, Brooks tells the story through the eyes of the courtier who both counseled and castigated David, and who is said to have chronicled his life. The Secret Chord reinterprets the well-known episodes of David's life and forgrounds other, even more remarkable and emotionally intense episodes that have been largely neglected. Brooks gives voice to those who love and those who fear him: his mother, Nizevet; his older brother Shammah; his beloved Yonatan; and his wives — the passionate and embittered Mikhal; the canny and indispensable Avigail; and enigmatic Batsheva, who must endure unspeakable trauma in order to grasp her own royal destiny. But it is Nathan who guides the king through their turbulent events unleashed by David's murderous eldest sons, and who finally raises up Solomon, the late-born child who redeems David's Lear-like dotage and fulfills the promise of his kingship.

This beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family and ambition brings David magnificently alive.

About the Author:

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, and attended Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.

In 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York City. Later she worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, and People of the Book is a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.

Brooks married author Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-Loup, France, in 1984. They had two sons– Nathaniel and Bizuayehu–and two dogs. They used to divide their time between their homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sydney, Australia.