The Pharaoh's Daughter by Mesu Andrews

Anippe has grown up in the shadows of Egypt’s good god Pharaoh, aware that Anubis, god of the afterlife, may take her or her siblings at any moment. She watched him snatch her mother and infant brother during childbirth, a moment which awakens in her a terrible dread of ever bearing a child. Now she is to be become the bride of Sebak, a kind but quick-tempered Captain of Pharaoh Tut’s army. In order to provide Sebak the heir he deserves and yet protect herself from the underworld gods, Anippe must launch a series of deceptions, even involving the Hebrew midwives—women ordered by Tut to drown the sons of their own people in the Nile. 

     When she finds a baby floating in a basket on the great river, Anippe believes Egypt’s gods have answered her pleas, entrenching her more deeply in deception and placing her and her son Mehy, whom handmaiden Miriam calls Moses, in mortal danger.

  As bloodshed and savage politics shift the balance of power in Egypt, the gods reveal their fickle natures and Anippe wonders if her son, a boy of Hebrew blood, could one day become king. Or does the god of her Hebrew servants, the one they call El Shaddai, have a different plan—for them all?

My review:

  Biblical fiction has never been my favorite genre', but there are some authors who do it better than others. Mesu Andrews is at the top of that list. I have been impressed with every book she has written, and it is obvious she puts a lot of study and research into her books.

  This book is a bit different from her others. We don't know much about the woman who found Moses as a baby and raised him as her own. Andrews takes the little bit we know and has spun a story around that. The book is mostly about the daughter of Pharaoah, so the book begins long before the birth of Moses and starts out with her as a child.  This is fiction, so most of the story is what the author came up with to fill in the gaps, but she did a great job of writing what this woman may have been like, and what her life may have been like.

  I enjoyed the book. I don't think it is her best one, but it was still a great read and worth reading. There is a lot of license taken with the story of Moses' birth and early life, but it in no way detracts from the biblical account and only made me appreciate the biblical account all the more.

About the author:

Mesu Andrews’ deep understanding of and love for God's Word brings the biblical
world alive for her readers. Her first novel, Love Amid the Ashes won the
2012 ECPA Book of the Year for a Debut Author. Her three subsequent novels, Love's
Sacred Song, Love in a Broken Vessel, and In the Shadow of Jezebel all released to
great reader enthusiasm. Mesu lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Roy.


The Pharaoh's Daughter is available from Waterbook/Multnomah Publishing.

Thanks to Waterbrook/Multnomah for the review copy.