Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter

A PLUME BOOK

ENCHANTRESS

MAGGIE ANTON
was born Margaret Antonofsky in Los Angeles, California, where she still resides. Raised in a secular, socialist household, she reached adulthood with little knowledge of her Jewish religion. All that changed when David Parkhurst, who was to become her husband, entered her life, and they both discovered Judaism as adults. That was the start of a lifetime of Jewish education, synagogue involvement, and ritual observance. This was in addition to raising their children, Emily and Ari, and working full-time as a clinical chemist for Kaiser Permanente for more than thirty years.

In 1992 Anton learned about a women’s Talmud class taught by Rachel Adler, now a professor at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. To her surprise, she fell in love with Talmud, a passion that has continued unabated for twenty years. Intrigued that the great Talmudic scholar Rashi had no sons, only daughters, Anton researched the family and decided to write novels about them. Thus the award-winning trilogy Rashi’s Daughters was born, to be followed by the National Jewish Book Award finalist
Rav Hisda’s Daughter, Book I: Apprentice.

Still studying women and Talmud, Anton has lectured throughout North America and Israel about the history behind her novels. You can follow her blog and contact her at her website, www.maggieanton.com.

Praise for
Enchantress

“
Enchantress
casts its own spell.”

—Nomi Eve, author of
Henna House
and
The Family Orchard

“Perhaps the best occult author of our time, Anton’s scintillating language sweeps the reader quickly into the chills and thrills of Jewish life and love during the Babylonian Empire.”

—Rabbi Goldie Milgram

“Maggie Anton’s
Enchantress
displays vast learning and delicious romance in equal measure. With charming characters, bewitching prose, and a spellbinding plot, Anton’s
Enchantress
will beguile readers.”

—Rabbi Burt Visotzky, Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary and author of
Sage Tales
:
Wisdom and Wonder from the Rabbis of the Talmud

“Maggie Anton performs nothing less than a feat of literary legerdemain in her latest novel. Yet again, the beloved author of the Rashi’s Daughters trilogy has exposed the forbidden secrets of the ancient world while, at the same time, conjuring up the flesh-and-blood women and men who lived out their lives in distant antiquity.
Enchantress
is an enchantment in itself!”

—Jonathan Kirsch, author of
The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan

Praise for
Rav Hisda’s Daughter, Book I: Apprentice

“The work of a master craftswoman set upon repairing a major gap in Jewish literature.”

—
Philadelphia Jewish Voice

“This absorbing novel should be on everyone’s historical fiction reading list.”

—
Library Journal
(starred review)

“
Rav Hisda’s Daughter
provides a wealth of historical detail about Jewish life in Babylon and Israel in the third century CE. Its interest lies in its portrayal of the sorcery, incantations, and women’s customs in this exotic, faraway period of time and place, sometimes against the backdrop of war.”

—Historical Novel Society

Also by Maggie Anton

Rashi’s Daughters
Book I: Joheved

Rashi’s Daughters
Book II: Miriam

Rashi’s Daughters
Book III: Rachel

Rashi’s Daughter: Secret Scholar
( for YA readers)

Rav Hisda’s Daughter
Book I: Apprentice

PLUME

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Maggie Anton

Map illustration by David Parkhurst

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Anton, Maggie, author.

Enchantress : a novel of Rav Hisda’s Daughter / Maggie Anton.

pages cm

eBook ISBN 978-0-698-15883-2

1. Jewish women—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction. 4. Jewish fiction. I. Title.

PS3601.N57E53 2014

813'.54—dc23 2014018774

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: Zoe Norvell

Cover image: Clematis, Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849–1914) / Private Collection / Photo © The Mass Gallery, London / The Bridgeman Art Library

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