David According to Geraldine Brooks
In 2015 Geraldine Brooks came out with “The Secret Chord” and in this book King David comes amazingly alive. This book has joined the ranks of books I recommend.
In her afterward Geraldine Brooks writes “David is the first man in literature whose story is told in detail from early childhood to extreme old age.” And you do get that in the Bible—this saga of a very human man who also became the beloved, and feared, and admired King David.
And Geraldine Brooks adds still some other dimensions to that David story—a breadth, a depth, a feeling, a wonder.
In one of the many disasters that David either caused or lived through, as he picked up his harp and began to sing and the words to the psalm were suddenly written on the page, tears came to my eyes and I recognized the human person who was feeling that psalm even as he wrote it.
I often finish a book and want to go on to read more about that subject. After reading “The Secret Chord”, I want to go back to the Hebrew Scriptures and once again follow this youngest son, this shepherd boy, this slayer of giants on past those events of his youth and on through his long life.
Many times when I complete a book that I have come to love in the reading of it, as I return it to the library I think “I need a copy of my own.” That is true of “The Secret Chord.”
David According to Geraldine Brooks
