Jean Dudek
Resource Publications, 164 pages
Published January 26, 2024
Jean Dudek’s novel The Scent of Bright Light tackles a foundational tale of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – the account of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac – breathing life into two other key players of this ancient drama, Sarah and Hagar. Dudek maintains strict fidelity to the biblical account, revealing her mastery of the hermeneutic spin each faith tradition gives to this story.
Even those who insist that our Scriptures come directly from God acknowledge that men (not women) transcribed and edited the texts. And it’s clear to even a casual reader that the biblical authors’ focus on the patriarchs leaves little room for the voices and experiences of women; if we look solely at the biblical narratives, we might come away with the impression that both Sarah and Hagar were insignificant chattel. But as Duke University’s Carol Meyers makes clear in Households and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women, while women lacked a dominant place in their nomadic clans, they played a central role in how those clans functioned.
Recognizing Meyer’s important insight, The Scent of Bright Light masterfully amplifies the narrative by entering the minds – and hearts – of these matriarchs of our faith. Using clever prose laced with gallows humor, Dudek considers how Sarah and Hagar suffered during the unfolding of these cataclysmic events over which they had absolutely no control. Particularly poignant are Dudek’s imaginings of their thoughts and feelings during visits from the Most High God, their captivity in the houses of Pharaoh and Abimelech, and the birth, banishment and near death of their own children.
Those of us who write historical fiction are rightly measured by the plausibility of our novels, and so we question ourselves, wondering, “Does this scene contradict the factual record?” and “Will the injection of this fictional character disturb the accuracy of underlying historical events?” Biblical fiction dramatically rachets up this tension. Authors courageous enough to attempt this task find themselves tethered not only to the historical record, but also to Holy Scripture. The Scent of Bright Light ably threads this needle, leaving out absolutely nothing — from the journey from Mesopotamia to Canaan, the detour in Egypt where Hagar becomes Sarah’s handmaiden and friend (a unique approach, but an insight Dudek shares with Islamist scholar Mohja Kahf and Jewish scholar Ayelet Cohen), and the return to Canaan where Hagar mounts a teenage rebellion and where Ishmael and Isaac nearly die at the hands of Abraham until their rescue by the Most High God. By telling this story from the point of view of the women, Dudek renders the patriarchs’ stories even more believable.
Dudek may be leading the charge into a zeitgeist that reimagines the scriptural accounts; novelist Marilynne Robinson recently underscored the narrative power of this sacred story in Reading Genesis.
For those who seek inspiration from holy texts, it is important to listen closely to the music behind the words passed down to us. To revel in that music, read Dudek’s imaginative – and yet entirely plausible – novel, The Scent of Bright Light.
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