Believers in biblical inerrancy will be annoyed by some of my choices. For instance, I don’t take literally all three accounts in Genesis of a husband passing off his wife as his sister in order to avoid getting killed by a king. It happens once with Sarah, Abraham, and Pharaoh; once with Sarah, Abraham, and Abimelech of Gerar; and a third time with Rebekah, Isaac, and Abimelech of Gerar. My conclusion that the two Abimelech versions of the story are really variant accounts of the same story is reinforced by the fact that both end with a newly-dug well being named “Beersheba.” I chose to leave the digging and naming of Beersheba with Isaac, and the incident of deceiving a dangerous king with Abraham, Sarah, and Pharaoh. I’d rather think that the Bible has included three variants of the same story than to think that these people were so dumb that they would dig the same well and give it the same name twice. Not to mention what a slow learner Abimelech apparently was—even if, as some have speculated, the Abimelech who flirted with Rebekah was the son of the Abimelech who had the hots for Sarah.

In preparing this novel I am indebted, as always, to a small corps of friends and family who read the chapters as they spew forth from the LaserJet. Kristine, my wife, is always there to read and keep me from the most egregious errors. She was joined on this novel by my daughter Emily, who reads like the perceptive actor that she is, with a keen eye for what characters would and would not do, and by our friends Erin and Phillip Absher, who were with us for much of the summer when I wrote the book. Erin, in particular, alerted me to an imbalance in my portrayal of one of the characters; unfortunately, she did so when I was right up against a deadline and had no time to make the substantial corrections that would be required. But once aware of the problem, I could never have allowed the book to be published as it was. So the deadline was pushed back one more day as I made the changes. It’s a better book for her having had the courage to tell me such unwelcome news. Another whose prereading and comments were much appreciated is Kathryn H. Kidd, who was far too generous with her time during a month when she had precious little of it to spare. And Kay McVey’s encouragement and enthusiasm for the book reassured me that maybe, despite all the difficulties, this story was going to work.