Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hint­ed at in a brief and vio­lent detour with­in the more famil­iar chap­ters of the Book of Gen­e­sis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah’s voice, this nov­el reveals the tra­di­tions and tur­moils of ancient wom­an­hood – the world of the red tent. It begins with the sto­ry of her moth­ers – Leah, Rachel, Zil­pah, and Bil­hah – the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sus­tain her through a hard-work­ing youth, a call­ing to mid­wifery, and a new home in a for­eign land. Dinah’s sto­ry reach­es out from a remark­able peri­od of ear­ly his­to­ry and cre­ates an inti­mate con­nec­tion with the past. Deeply affect­ing, The Red Tent com­bines rich sto­ry­telling with a valu­able achieve­ment in mod­ern fic­tion: a new view of bib­li­cal wom­en’s society.