Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.
The summary from Kindle is:
Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.
While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.
Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.
Rice has published this novel himself rather than looking for a commercial publisher because the fiction market is totally flooded with novels based on the Bible. The difference between most (or all?) of those novels and Rice’s is that the others are all either sand-and-sandal stories (reverent re-tellings of children’s Bible stories for adults), such as The Robe, an old novel by Lloyd C. Douglas; or creative derivations of them, such as The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. None of them appear to be critical re-tellings from an agnostic, even cynical, viewpoint like Rice’s novel. No agent, editor, or reader would be able to find Among the Lilies in this veritable ocean of Bible fan-literature.
Elah is a servant in one of Solomon’s dozens of stables of wives, concubines, and sex slaves, where he is surrounded by temptations he cannot touch. The concubines are all beautiful, but the wives are faded and fat. And they think they can sing. Elah thought he had the worst job in the world, but it was at least a job.
But Elah has prospects. He is a good writer. At least, if anyone would want to read what he wrote, which was mostly deep and depressing things (the origin of the Biblical Ecclesiastes). His friend Eli is good with numbers. Someday, they fantasize, they will be Chief Scribe and Chief Steward.
Then Elah meets Henna, a black thunderbolt, the only sub-Saharan African woman in Jerusalem. She is beautiful and, like Elah, a good writer. An instant bond forms and Elah stops at nothing to find her again, which he does. This is what he wants: a partner not just of the body but of the mind and spirit. They exchange love notes, which have become the Song of Songs, Biblical passages seldom read in modern churches because of their explicit sexuality.
Elah and Eli succeed in their quests for importance in Solomon’s court. But Elah’s pursuit of Henna comes to a halt when Solomon decides he wants to marry her. Time and time again Elah almost meets up with her, until they get caught. At the end, when Elah and Henna are very briefly reunited, Elah gets to choose between being a living dog and a dead lion—words that he had written. This ending will make you wonder, just how far would you go in the pursuit of true love?
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