A Deeper Well
This engaging historical fiction based on a well-known Bible story draws the reader into Nessa’s world on the day she becomes a woman and vulnerable to the machinations of her family men. Nessa is thirteen years old. Smith melds imaginative plotting with scholarship of the culture, religion, and political situation of 1st-century Samaria. Her characters have inner voices which resonate with modern readers. Telling the story in first-person for her protagonist and third person for other point-of-view characters, Smith helps readers stay grounded in who does what to whom.
Abandoning the “fallen woman” hypothesis commonly assigned to the protagonist, Smith devises five plausible (for the time and place) rationales for Nessa having had five husbands prior to her famous meeting at Jacob’s Well. Nessa suffers the ill-will and indifference of others, but she also is an agent of her own tragedy. The meeting at the well and its aftermath follows the historical account, then Smith fills subsequent encounters with other Sychar villagers with teachings reported elsewhere in the Gospels.
Vernacular English substitutes for vernacular Aramaic, but cultural and religious practice and terminology preserve the historic atmosphere. Technology—or the lack thereof—and relative poverty anchor Nessa’s plight in a time when women were treated more like a family asset or liability than a person. That Jesus recognizes and responds to her humanity and need is hardly a spoiler.
