During the Ark's construction, it is Naamah who remembers to stow buckets for washing and waste. As Blake envisions her, Naamah is a practical woman. Naamah is a parable for our time: a provocative fable of body, spirit, and resilience.īlake reimagines the story of Noah's Ark from the perspective of Noah's wife, Naamah, in her inventive but erratic debut.

In fresh and modern language, Blake revisits the story of the Ark that rescued life on earth, and rediscovers the agonizing burdens endured by the woman at the heart of the story. Here is the woman tormented by dreams and questions of her own-questions of service and self-determination, of history and memory, of the kindness or cruelty of fate. Here is the woman escaping into the unreceded waters, where a seductive angel tempts her to join a strange and haunted world. Here is the woman torn between faith and fury, lending her strength to her sons and their wives, caring for an unruly menagerie of restless creatures, silently mourning the lover she left behind. Now, in a work of astounding invention, acclaimed writer Sarah Blake reclaims the story of his wife, Naamah, the matriarch who kept them alive. We know the story of Noah, moved by divine vision to launch their escape. With the coming of the Great Flood-the mother of all disasters-only one family was spared, drifting on an endless sea, waiting for the waters to subside. 'A dreamy and transgressive feminist retelling of the Great Flood from the perspective of Noah's wife as she wrestles with the mysterious metaphysics of womanhood at the end of the world.' - O, The Oprah Magazine

Naamah a novel