I’ve been waiting a few weeks to bring out Maggie Anton’s biblical historical fiction, The Midwives Escape, which is a perfect accompaniment to the entire book of Exodus. Parshat Beshalach has some of my favorite moments, which are also pivotal in the book.
The brilliance of The Midwives Escape is not in the writing or the story line (I really hope we all know how this story turns out!). Instead, it is in giving a more human, personal angle to a universal story. The two title midwives are part of the Erev Rav, or multitude of nations, that journeyed out of Egypt with the newly freed Hebrew people. Some say they converted, some blame them for all the bad stuff that goes down in the desert. Anton leans more towards the first group.
Watching them cross the sea of reeds, eat manna for the first time, and complain about living conditions, made all those familiar scenes become tangible. As was learning about basic survival skills of the time such as cheese making and weaving. What must it have been like to travel for 40 full years, uprooting yourselves every time you finally got comfortable? The mother daughter pair in the novel allowed me to read the entire rest of Exodus with a different perspective. Instead of thinking of the events in the dessert as stories or fables, I think of them as happening to real people, with real emotions and families. Whether you believe the bible is historically accurate or not, that’s a heavy way to experience the sneak attack from Amalek or the lack of water in the desert. The Midwives Escape makes a familiar story new.