Eve-Elissa Elliott

Eve
Elissa Elliott
Bantam, Dec 29 2009, $15.00
ISBN: 9780385341455

Eve and Adam love their life in the Garden of Eden. However, paradise is lost when Eve seduced by Lucifer as much as by her curiosity persuades Adam to take an apple bite from the Tree of Knowledge forbidden fruit. Saddened but a believer in the original tough love, Elohim kicks the pair from the Garden and into the harsh cruel world.

Over the next few years, the previously pampered pair struggle, but finally turn it around as their home becomes a safe haven to raise kids and drink beer with figs and grapes. They have several children as Adam believes in barefoot and pregnant. Abel is a sheepherder; Cain becomes a farmer, Seth the favorite provides solace to his mom; Naava is a weaver; Dara is a potter; and Aya the healer remains invisible to her family. Cain turns away from Elohim to the Sumerian fertility goddess Inanna while his sister Naava seduces him into taking her to the nearby city. Naava is jealous that Dara works for the prince, so she marries the prince. Outraged by her betrayal Cain causes a riot that displaces the first family and soon commits fratricide.

This dysfunctional family drama makes for an enjoyable biblical biographical fiction in which they needed a shrink. The story line leaps around as perspective is rotated. Eve grows in her job as the first mom after being kicked to the curb by God due to the original sin. Her daughters even “invisible” Aya come across as fully developed in part because they tell the saga while the males are not fleshed out beyond their roles of supporting the women who dominate their lives. Although except for the setting, the First family feels like an American brood sent back to the first days, fans will enjoy the novelization of Eve and her clan.

Harriet Klausner