This is my synopsis for Rakkot Eyes. I will likely add links from this to full scale character profiles.
Rakkot Eyes is the first book in a series covering the story of Leah, the first wife of Jewish Patriarch Jacob. Leah, trapped by the weight of expectations since childhood, longs for freedom. As her options run out, Leah is offered the chance to make her dreams happen, but only if she betrays everything she holds dear.
Set in Mesopotamia (present day southern Turkey), during the Bronze Age, Rakkot Eyes follows Leah and her family. The main characters are Leah, her younger sister Rachel, their father Laban, and their cousin Jacob. Other important characters are Laban’s siblings and their children, as well as Yassib, a slave who has been Leah’s best friend since childhood.
Leah, dedicated to the temple of the goddess as an infant, was brought home ten years later by Laban when his wife, Chaya, died giving birth to Rachel. This caused a rift in the family, for Laban’s sister, a dedicated temple priestess named Geme-Inanna, swore that the goddess now cursed Leah, while Laban’s sister, Sagzu, a powerful priestess herself, disagreed. During the same year, Laban purchases two young slaves, Paebel and Yassib. Further conflict stems from the attitudes of tent-dwelling family (Laban, his brother Bakalum, his sister Ana, and their children) and city-dwelling family (Geme-Inanna, Iyyar and Iyyar’s children) toward each other. Woven through this is Yassib’s quiet love for Leah, a woman he knows he can never marry.
By the time Jacob arrives, fleeing the wrath of his twin brother, Leah has been caring for her sister for years and now longs for a life of her own. The women tend to protect pretty, young Rachel, feeling sorry for a girl without a mother. This, unfortunately, has created a little monster. Jacob, seeing Rachel working herself ragged during a severe punishment for bad behaviour, comes to believe that she is the only hard working woman in the camp. He asks for this beautiful young paragon of womanhood as his wife and is tricked into agreeing to an outrageous seven years of bond slavery!
As the date for the wedding draws near, Leah is brought before her father and told that Jacob will be marrying her and not Rachel. She is told that she may not speak of it to anyone. Laban will get Jacob drunk and present him with Leah instead of Rachel, and Leah is to answer as her sister. Leah is horrified at the prospect of tricking a man into marriage. Shortly after this, Yassib discloses a secret to her – since childhood, he has been setting aside coins to buy his freedom and he now has enough. He begs her to accept him as her husband. As she is trying to decide her course of action, the alarm sounds – the camp is being attacked! Yassib runs back to help protect the family. When Leah arrives, she finds that her lifelong friend has died. Distraught, she runs back to the woods and retrieves his box of coins. She shoves them at her father and demands that Yassib be buried and mourned as a free man.
Leah goes into mourning. Suffering from what we would now call post traumatic stress syndrome, she relives the deaths of her mother and Yassib and falls into a deep depression from which no one can reach her. After eight days without food or water, she hallucinates and then runs into the desert. There she receives a vision that will change her life forever.
When Leah returns, she begins to help her younger sister prepare for a wedding which Leah knows will never happen. She knows that she has two choices. If she lies to Jacob and tells him that she is Rachel, she knows that she will be divorced quickly and shamed before the city. If she tells Jacob the truth, he will refuse to marry her and her father will have her executed as a willful child. On the wedding night, she must make her choice.
And that’s just the first seven years of the exciting life of Leah, Jacob, and Rachel!
