Sarah's Reviews > The Bronze Bow

Elizabeth George Speare mostly stuck to colonial New England in her novels - Calico Captive, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Sign of the Beaver - but in The Bronze Bow, she pulls the reader all the way back first-century Judaea, a place not that different from pre-Revolutionary Boston. Both places were a battleground between imperial soldiers who would rather been anywhere else, and local angry, disenfranchised young men endlessly seeking a punching bag.

Our eighteen-year-old protagonist, Daniel the Zealot, has spent the last four years on a mountaintop with his fellow outlaws. He imagines that he and his friends will be anointed by God and miraculously drive the Romans out any day now. In this gang, every man looks out for number one, but fate will soon throw people into Daniel's awareness and force him to care. They are:

- Joel, a childhood acquaintance who shares Daniel's thirst for freedom but not his bloodlust

- Malthace, called Thacia by her friends, Joel's beautiful and kind twin sister

- Samson, a deaf-mute foreigner rescued from a slave caravan who appoints himself Daniel's bodyguard after the later does a good deed for him

- Leah, Daniel's traumatized younger sister who hasn't left the family hovel in nine years

- Marcus, a young Gallic Roman soldier who seems to enjoy lording it over Daniel, and

-Jesus, an itinerant preacher of unclear political allegiance, Who says the strangest things and forces Daniel to examine himself.

A pebble rolls down the mountainside, and then another, and another...in three hundred years the avalanche will bury Rome itself.

Content Advisory
Violence: Slaughter is a fact of life in this setting. Rosh and his followers think nothing of killing the merchants who pass through their territory. Later, a skirmish results in the deaths of two freedom fighters and a handful of Romans. Daniel mugs a murderous old man but decided not to kill him.

(view spoiler)[Years before the story begins, Daniel's uncle angered the local Romans, setting off a chain reaction that ended with six men, including the uncle and Daniel and Leah's father, being crucified. The children's mother kept vigil with her dead husband, sickened, and died in a few weeks. Leah, who at the time was five years old, saw her daddy hanging on a cross, and has since hidden in the house. The villagers think she's possessed, although she acts nothing like a demoniac. Today she might be diagnosed with PTSD. (hide spoiler)]

Sex: Daniel thinks Marcus is staking out his house to spy on Daniel and his seditious buddies....it never occurs to him that (view spoiler)[Marcus has a thing for Leah, even though he actually saw the Roman youth checking her out on one occasion. Our hero proceeds to change the location of his secret Zealot meetings and notices that Marcus has not followed. Well done, Dan. Your sister has never spoken to a man outside the family, is literally afraid of her own shadow, and you left her alone with a horny Roman soldier - one from France, no less. The biggest miracle in the book is that Marcus is actually a nice boy who respects Leah's boundaries. (hide spoiler)]

Language: Nothing.

Substance Abuse: Lots of wine-drinking but no drunkenness.

Politics and Religion: The book definitely believes in Jesus as Savior and Lord, but it's not out to proselytize. Non-Christians can probably still enjoy it as a literary work.

Conclusion
The Bronze Bow is a vivid glimpse of the ancient world, chronicling a fiery young man's journey from vengeance to compassion. Vintage YA and Biblical fiction at its finest. Heartily recommended.