Mesu Andrews's The Pharaoh's Daughter ~ Reviewed

THE PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER
Mesu Andrews
Series: Treasures of the Nile
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: WaterBrook Press (March 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1601425996

Description:

“Fear is the most fertile ground for faith.”
 

 “You will be called Anippe, daughter of the Nile. Do you like it?” Without waiting for a reply, she pulls me into her squishy, round tummy for a hug. 

I’m trying not to cry. Pharaoh’s daughters don’t cry.

When we make our way down the tiled hall, I try to stop at ummi Kiya’s chamber. I know her spirit has flown yet I long for one more moment. Amenia pushes me past so I keep walking and don’t look back. 

Like the waters of the Nile, I will flow.
 
Anippe has grown up in the shadows of Egypt’s good god Pharaoh, aware that Anubis, god of the afterlife, may take her or her siblings at any moment. She watched him snatch her mother and infant brother during childbirth, a moment which awakens in her a terrible dread of ever bearing a child. Now she is to be become the bride of Sebak, a kind but quick-tempered Captain of Pharaoh Tut’s army. In order to provide Sebak the heir he deserves and yet protect herself from the underworld gods, Anippe must launch a series of deceptions, even involving the Hebrew midwives—women ordered by Tut to drown the sons of their own people in the Nile. 
     

When she finds a baby floating in a basket on the great river, Anippe believes Egypt’s gods have answered her pleas, entrenching her more deeply in deception and placing her and her son Mehy, whom handmaiden Miriam calls Moses, in mortal danger.
  

As bloodshed and savage politics shift the balance of power in Egypt, the gods reveal their fickle natures and Anippe wonders if her son, a boy of Hebrew blood, could one day become king. Or does the god of her Hebrew servants, the one they call El Shaddai, have a different plan—for them all?

Review:

The Pharoah's Daughter is a fictionalized telling of the story of Moses' adopted mother. This book calls her Anippe, and tells her story, from growing up as Pharoah's daughter, and later, King Tut's sister. She is terrified of Anubis, the god of the afterlife, after seeing him take her mother and baby brother during childbirth. She is married to a man she doesn't know at age 14, and is terrified to give birth, but after finding a Hebrew child floating in a basket while her husband is away at was, she decides the gods are favoring her so she does not have to bear a child of her own. 

This book was interesting, as the author did use Biblical and historical truths for the story, but other parts were clearly made up and not scriptural. I think we have to be careful, as I said in a review for another book, that we don't let the fictionalized story replace the Biblical truth we know in our minds. As a story, this was interesting, but I just don't like liberties taken in a “Biblical” story that aren't in scripture.

Reviewed by: Sarah Meyers