Angela Hunt’s Jerusalem Road series is off to a brilliant start!
Check out the gorgeous cover and official blurb, then I’ll share my thoughts:
Thomas and Tasmin, twin siblings hired to oversee a wedding feast in Cana, worry when the host runs out of wine . . . until a guest tells Tasmin to have the servants fill the pitchers by the gate with water from the cistern. Reluctantly, she obeys and is amazed when rainwater turns into the finest wine ever tasted in Cana.
When Thomas impulsively decides to follow the teacher from Nazareth, he and Tasmin argue–since the twins have been together since the womb, Tasmin can’t accept losing her brother to some magician-prophet. Aided by Jude, younger brother to Jesus of Nazareth, she decides to follow the Nazarene’s group and do whatever she must to mend the fractured relationship and bring her brother home.
I’m happy to say that Daughter of Cana lived up to my anticipation of excellence! The course of the story itself unfolded differently than what I expected going in. However, the story of Tasmin and Jude’s mission to bring their “wayward” brothers home, and their struggle to believe in and support Jesus throughout His ministry, kept me eagerly turning the next page over and over again. Angela has many years of expertise under her belt, and it shows! The pacing of the chapters is smooth and quick, so before you know it, you’ve blazed through a hundred pages and still don’t want to stop reading!
It was interesting to view Jesus through the eyes of people who didn’t believe in Him as the Messiah. I’ve never looked at Him from that perspective, and it really opened my mind to how strange and difficult it must have really been for Jesus’s siblings and the families of some of the disciples. Yes, Jude and Tasmin’s stubbornness to accept Jesus was frustrating at times, but I could understand the emotions they were feeling. Jesus’s actions and words didn’t make sense to many people–hence why the religious leaders and others reviled Him, and why His disciples abandoned Him in fear in His time of need. He didn’t match up with the traditional vision of the Messiah, so of course many struggled to accept His claims of being the Anointed One.
I loved how Jude and Tasmin always seemed to be one step behind Jesus and His followers, and learned most of what they did about His ministry through second-hand accounts. You got a greater sense of the buzz He created among the populace, and how His actions and words came across to them.
I also loved seeing the familial relationships between Jesus and his family, and even his siblings’ somewhat begrudging love and respect for “big brother” Jesus. I’ve never given much thought to Jesus’s family outside of Mary and Joseph–though I knew they existed. But now, I will never read the Gospels–or the book of Jude–the same way again. Jesus’s siblings’ faith in Him was hard won, but He never stopped loving them, even when they turned their backs on Him. And once they finally did place their faith in Him, history tells us that it remained true until the end.
5/5 Stars for Daughter of Cana! I am eagerly awaiting the release of Book 2, The Shepherd’s Wife, in October! I’m interested to see if it will pick up after this book (after Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection) or if it will jump back to a time within the first book. Whatever the case, it’s sure to be just as excellent a read!
PS: I want to say a big THANK YOU to Angela Hunt and the Bethany House team for graciously sending me a free copy of this book for review (all thoughts and opinions are my own, and I was not obliged to give a favorable review). It’s an honor to help support a long-time favorite author and connect her to new readers!
