Review of Vashti’s Daughter
Raven Wests’ novel “Vashti’s Daughter” is brilliant. I enjoyed it. Every page. I would call it a fantasy, with the best meaning of the word. It is somewhat akin to J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books, but better. The plot is excellent and moves at a delightful speed. It is very creative and thoughtful. It contains time travel, reincarnation, romance, a curse, abusive male power, and justice. It is a gripping tale with a blend of history, Bible, fantasy, magic, rationalism, past and present.
It is about a female abused and divorced publisher who mysteriously receives a book manuscript claiming to be factual that Vashti, mentioned briefly in the biblical book Esther, had a daughter. She discards the manuscript, but it strangely reappears. After discarding it several times and failing to destroy it, she begins to read it. But before she gets far into the book, she is transported back to 366 BCE. Upon returning to the present, she thinks she had a dream. She realizes it is no dream when the time travel repeats several times.
When she arrives in the past, she appears as Vashti’s daughter about to be proclaimed a queen. She meets Queen Esther, King Darius, Alexander the Great, and others. She seeks to show the world the justice in Vashti’s behavior when her husband, the king, mistreated her. She also needs to find a way to annul the curse placed upon Vashti’s descendants, which includes her, that they will never have a good marriage. It has been working for centuries.
Vashti, her daughter, and their descendants become heroes and role models for women today.