Esther Bat Hanan, the hero­ine of Lori Banov Kaufmann’s new his­tor­i­cal nov­el for young adults, Rebel Daugh­ter, is the daugh­ter of a Tem­ple priest in Jerusalem dur­ing the trag­ic Jew­ish War against Roman occu­pa­tion. Between 66 and 70 C.E., the colony of Judea was torn by inter­nal fac­tions but ulti­mate­ly chose to fight against the over­whelm­ing pow­er of the Roman Empire. This for­ma­tive episode in Jew­ish his­to­ry unfolds from the per­spec­tive of one excep­tion­al young woman, whose char­ac­ter is based on an intrigu­ing grave inscrip­tion found in Italy, mark­ing the rest­ing place of a Jew­ish cap­tive brought to Rome. Esther is intel­li­gent, curi­ous, and insight­ful. She ques­tions her own motives as well as those of every­one around her, includ­ing the mem­bers of her con­flict­ed fam­i­ly. In spite of the fact that read­ers may know the out­come of the larg­er pic­ture, which cul­mi­nat­ed in the destruc­tion of the Tem­ple and the cru­el repres­sion of Judea’s inhab­i­tants, Esther’s per­son­al fate is unde­ter­mined. Kaufmann’s care­ful­ly researched and well-craft­ed nar­ra­tive draws read­ers into Esther’s role in tur­bu­lent events, as well as her full range of emo­tions and dif­fi­cult per­son­al decisions.

Con­stant­ly ques­tion­ing the cul­tur­al norms that pro­hib­it women from learn­ing, Esther con­vinces her father to teach her to read and study, not only Hebrew but also Greek. She observes him enact­ing the com­plex cer­e­monies of Tem­ple sac­ri­fice and feels vis­cer­al­ly con­nect­ed to the Jew­ish peo­ple, even more so as their lives become pro­gres­sive­ly more threat­ened. Esther’s rela­tion­ship with her moth­er, Sarah, is much more com­pro­mised by Sarah’s accom­mo­da­tion to men’s con­trol of women, as well as by her unre­solved grief at the loss of a young son before Esther was born. Esther’s sad­ness of her mother’s rejec­tion remains a loom­ing pres­ence and an unde­ni­able influ­ence on all of the young woman’s rela­tion­ships. Kauf­mann avoids anachro­nisms; Esther’s rebel­lious­ness does not extend to all pre­scrip­tive gen­der roles of her time. Rather, she strug­gles to rec­on­cile her per­son­al needs with the demands of being a duti­ful daugh­ter and mem­ber of Jew­ish society.

Some of the major char­ac­ters are based on his­tor­i­cal fig­ures includ­ing Joseph Ben Matityahu, bet­ter known as Jose­phus, author of The Jew­ish War. This first cen­tu­ry C.E. account by a Jew­ish leader, who first fought the Romans and lat­er changed his alle­giance to the win­ning side, is both deeply infor­ma­tive and con­tro­ver­sial. In Kaufmann’s nov­el, the man some­times viewed by Jews as a col­lab­o­ra­tor is pre­sent­ed from a dif­fer­ent angle, as the object of Esther’s phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al attrac­tion. The ambi­gu­i­ties of his role in his­to­ry become part of his pos­si­bil­i­ties as a mate. Esther is torn between her desire to trust this hand­some and dynam­ic man and her aware­ness that his morals might be more flex­i­ble than they should be. The idea of Jose­phus as the object of a strong young woman’s sex­u­al ardor and of her simul­ta­ne­ous skep­ti­cism cer­tain­ly offers a new per­spec­tive on this chron­i­cler of Jew­ish nationalism.

Roman and Jew­ish ideals and cul­ture are strong­ly con­trast­ed in this book. Indif­fer­ence to moral­i­ty, gra­tu­itous tor­ture of their sub­jects, and debased per­son­al rela­tion­ships are all opposed to the Jew­ish val­ues of schol­ar­ship, fideli­ty to the law, and the cen­tral­i­ty of fam­i­ly. There are even descrip­tions of Roman atroc­i­ties that fore­shad­ow the Holo­caust, such as detailed scenes of utter inhu­man­i­ty and the use of the term ​“selec­tions” in deter­min­ing which cap­tives will be allowed to live. Yet there are some dis­hon­est and dis­loy­al Jews in the sto­ry, as well as Jew­ish polit­i­cal extrem­ists who fail to assess their polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion real­is­ti­cal­ly. At the same time, a Roman cit­i­zen, the for­mer­ly enslaved Tiberius, is one of the most nuanced char­ac­ters; he caus­es Esther to reeval­u­ate all of her assump­tions. She grad­u­al­ly learns to rec­on­cile her aspi­ra­tions for free­dom and the ter­ri­bly lim­it­ing cir­cum­stances of her time. At one des­per­ate moment, Esther com­pares her lack of free will to the sta­tus of ​“an insect trapped in pine resin.” By the novel’s con­clu­sion, she has negat­ed this metaphor and bro­ken free.

This high­ly rec­om­mend­ed sto­ry includes an author’s note, and a thor­ough his­tor­i­cal note by Pro­fes­sor Jonathan J. Price of Tel Aviv University.