The Handmaid and the Carpenter

Chapter One

chapter one

Nazareth

january, 4 b.c.

Joseph

Outside, a thunderstorm raged. a great wind frightened the animals and bent the trees low to the ground, shaking their leaves almost off their branches. But inside the house of just-married Simon and Esther, there was light and laughter. A long table covered with a striped cloth was pushed up close to the wall, and it was laden with earthenware platters decorated by palm fronds and piled high with eggplant and olives, with spit-roasted beef and lamb and fish, with rounds of flatbread, with grapes and oranges and figs and sweet cakes.

Beneath the table, sixteen-year-old Joseph sat cross-legged in silence, watching sandals and ankles and hems of tunics go by. No one had seen him—he was almost totally obscured by the tablecloth—and he enjoyed the anonymity. He wa ... read full excerpt from The Handmaid and the Carpenter ebook