Naamah

February 18, 2019
Blake reimagines the story of Noah’s Ark from the perspective of Noah’s wife, Naamah, in her inventive but erratic debut. As Blake envisions her, Naamah is a practical woman. During the Ark’s construction, it is Naamah who remembers to stow buckets for washing and waste. Aboard ship, she serves as midwife to a ewe giving birth to two lambs, then later feeds the weaker, dying lamb to a restless tiger. After her son Shem is clawed by a polar bear, Naamah stitches up the cuts. Privately, Naamah is less matter-of-fact or down-to-earth. She mourns her lover, a widow lost in the Deluge, meets an Angel of the Lord and becomes the Angel’s lover, and chats with a vulture that is really the mythic Metatron. Guided by a time-traveling descendant, she visits the 21st century, where she watches children playing with a Noah’s Ark toy set. The author creates a for-adults-only multidimensional portrait of Noah’s wife by combining biblical narrative with modern prose, fantasy with realism, spirituality with erotica. Despite its mysticism and metaphorical aspects that may perplex some readers, this is a remarkable feat of imagination.

April 1, 2019

DEBUT The heavy rains have ended, and Noah and his family are waiting for the water to recede in order to make a new home. In elegant verse, Naamah, Noah's wife and the mother of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, describes the tedious work, anxiety, and fear, as well as the love and happiness of her life caring for the animals on the Ark and her family. In her spare time, Naamah enjoys swimming, and during one of her swims she meets an underwater angelic presence that she grows to love. Naamah has intimate relations with this angel many times and details explicitly her enjoyment of being female. Our heroine has the endurance and perseverance to battle her desires to save myriad species of the world and often questions her faith in the God capable of punishing the earth so cruelly. Wild, fantastical dreams inhabit Naamah's mind as she sleeps, and mystical, surreal events also inhabit her wakeful world. VERDICT Ingenious and highly imaginative, this debut novel is sure to spark conversation and could also provoke controversy.--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2019
Blake transports readers to biblical times in her first novel, examining the plight of Noah and his ark through the eyes of Noah's wife, Naamah. In addition to the animals they load onto the ark, Noah and Naamah also bring their three grown sons and their sons' wives. But life on the ark after the torrential rains leaves Naamah with plenty of time for reflection, which sends her diving into the waters day after day. In their depths, Naamah discovers an angel tending to a city of the dead, largely populated by children. As Naamah wrestles with the horror of their deaths, her own grief over the passing of her lover, who refused to stow away on the ark, and her anger at God for bringing the floods, she finds she can no longer see the animals aboard the ark. Vivid dreams of a talking bird and a sage female descendant further limn the depths of Naamah's crisis of faith. Blake's tale is a powerful exploration of the trauma of change and the reckoning required to move on from unimaginable loss.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2019
A retelling of Noah's Ark centered around Noah's wife, Naamah--the woman who helped reshape the world with her hands."When someone dies and you forget how they look or how they laughed, that is how they forgot the land." So begins the story of Naamah, Noah, and their family after the Great Flood. In the wake of the devastation, the family must grapple with the world they've left behind, survive their current reality, and prepare for the future. Headstrong and protective, Naamah struggles while on the ark: with caring for the animals, missing the land, losing her lover (and friend), and questioning her faith. Naamah's inability to trust God or his plan pulses through the novel. She can't understand why everything had to die, why Noah and she were chosen to repopulate the Earth, or what will happen when (or if) the waters recede. Naamah does not possess blind faith; she is angry and distrustful of Him and what He has done and can do. While discussing motherhood with one of her son's wives, she asks herself if God fully understands the ramifications of what he's done: "Naamah wonders if God has considered this: women so distrustful of Him that they might never bear children for the new world." Blake's writing is deeply feminist. Whether she's focused on giving birth or having sex, Blake sketches the female body and experience in all its gore and glory. In the biblical tradition, reality, dreams, and visions blur and bleed together. Naamah enters other people's dreams, spirits visit her on Earth, and she spends hours exploring beneath the floodwaters. Comprised of mesmerizing prose poem-esque sections, the novel explores themes of sexuality, purpose, loss, love, and faith.A poetic debut of biblical proportions.

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