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The Desert Songs Trilogy

The Scrolls of Deborah

Foreword Indie Gold Medal Winner

An unheralded descendant of Abraham honors the vibrant women of her tribe in The Scrolls of Deborah, Esther Goldenberg’s quiet triumph of biblical fiction.

“Everybody has a story to tell, a song to sing, a life that makes a difference,” Deborah tells Rebekah, the distant cousin she’s purchased as a nursemaid for. Deborah, raised in Egypt, has firsthand experience with the forgotten women of Abraham’s tribe—including Hallel, her grandmother, who lived a luxurious life in the pharaoh’s palace, and who taught her to worship Yah when they met under each full moon.

Rebekah is an eager student, more sister than master. With Deborah, she breathes in the name of God, stories of Sarah and the matriarchs, and tantalizing tales from distant lands: “I told her about the cats of Egypt and the red radishes and green lettuce and the sweet, juicy melons … at the market.” They grow together, traipsing desert fields and anointing each other with oil. They mark coming-of-age milestones with delight. And when Abraham sends an envoy seeking a wife for his son, they travel together to meet him.

While the novel acknowledges hard realities, including era misogyny, slavery, the Akedah, and sexual assault, it does so in an unobtrusive way; its focus is more celebratory. While Deborah—who taught herself to read over Jacob’s shoulder—charges gentle Joseph with writing her stories down, they already pulse through the women of her “quite … remarkable tribe” by virtue of her determined repetition. They dance each month in ceremonies evoking Rosh Chodesh; they bind their family together, uplifting kindness and righteousness. Through their eyes, new depth is revealed in the patriarchs, too: Abraham has regrets; divine light shines forth from Isaac.

In the exaltant biblical novel The Scrolls of Deborah, it is women of Abraham’s tribe who are the true storymakers.

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Jackie Pick, Book Reviewer says:

The biblical story of Joseph is a wild ride from favored son to Egyptian vizier. Betrayal! Prophetic dreams! A famine-induced family reunion! Ancient cattle herds! Naturally, one might expect a novel retelling of his life to be just as dramatic. But Esther Goldenberg takes a different approach, leaning into the slow, contemplative, deeply introspective side of Joseph’s journey. Anchored in the biblical text yet rendered with a dreamlike smoothness, it transforms familiar history into something immersive and intimate.

Goldenberg’s Joseph is both a golden child and an outsider, a man marked by divine destiny and semi-dysfunctional family dynamics. He’s naive in his youth, so much so that you want to shake him and say, “Please, for the love of God, read the room.” And that’s part of the charm: Goldenberg makes him endearing, even as he floats through life making choices that range from “wise beyond his years” to “spectacularly oblivious.”

The book’s pacing is a nod to the pace of life of that era. Long stretches of time unfold in spongey, atmospheric detail. Then, suddenly, decades pass in a sentence. Blink and Joseph has gone from “pensive teenager” to “deeply pensive middle-aged man.” The effect is a literary embodiment of how life rarely proceeds at a reasonable speed.

Goldenberg explores the themes of duty and expectation (and boy, how exhausting it must be to be perceived as special!) Joseph isn’t just a guy trying to make it in the world, he’s the guy, the chosen one, the standard-bearer. His interactions with Esau crack open some of the novel’s most poignant moments, highlighting the pain of being either too favored or not favored enough (a reminder that biblical families often struggled with “healthy communication”). Meanwhile, his relationships with his father, with Deena, with his brothers, and with Potiphar paint a picture of a man searching for connection, but never quite finding where he belongs.

And then there’s the longing. Goldenberg does not shy away from Joseph’s desire for love and companionship. His sexuality is explored, his divine destiny never presented as at odds with his human needs. It’s tastefully done, but if you prefer your biblical fiction without surprises in the romance department, just a heads up.

For readers of Goldenberg’s first book in the series, Deborah returns (!), linking the novel to broader conversations about patriarchal narratives and the role of women in biblical history. It’s a lovely reminder that while the focus may be on Joseph, the lives of the women around him are just as rich and complex.

Is Seventeen Spoons a pulse-pounding odyssey? No. But it is a thoughtful, deeply immersive novel that takes a legendary figure and turns him into a living, breathing, yearning human being. Goldenberg proves that biblical fiction can be an excavation of emotions, faith, and the ways we are shaped by the weight of expectation.