The Source - James Michener

This book was first published in the 60's. It had completely passed me by until it appeared in my Amazon 'Wish List' last year. I don't remember putting it there but must have because there it was.

Gail (Sis in law), bought it me for my birthday last December stating that she'd worked on a kibbutz close to where this fictional history takes place. Although fictional, it is built around historical fact and those thing history suggest.

Starting with Ur, a caveman the history races through thousands of years to finish with Israeli Independence in 1948. Despite the very tiny print and the fact that Michener's prose is not the easiest to read, I could not put the book down. I learned so much about the development of land and religion in the middle East - things I would not have known (or believed) without reading the book. Did you know that the Greeks held sway over what we knew as Palestine long before the Romans? Or, that pretty much all of Judaism was wiped out in the area only to be repopulated by later expulsions from Europe?

Well worth a read.