Ordinarily, we don’t honor disobedient people. Our history does, as many rebels are the heralds of overdue change, but in this world where most folks “go along to get along” the contrary soul is a resented member of a community. Every town has these intractable dissenters who, even when they are right, still alienate their peers with their hard-headed ways. Born outsiders, these nonconformists follow their own lonely stars though life, with few friends for love or guidance, not because they want to be difficult but because time and circumstance force them into this uneasy role. That is the theme of T. K. Thorne in her second historical novel, Angels at the Gate, and it stars one of the Bible’s most baffling women: Lot’s wife, the woman who disobeyed a command from God’s angels and looked back, at cost of her life. I never understood the behavior of Lot’s wife when I read her story in Sunday School. To me, when the town is literally falling to pieces around your ears and two white-garbed, winged men suddenly appear, shouting “Run for the hills and don’t you dare look back!” it’s time to follow orders and get the heck out of…
Think about yarn for a moment. If you look at it under the microscope, you’ll see that it’s a series of fibrous strands that have been woven together so tightly they seem to fuse into a single cord. Little ends of the strands edge free from the cord and catch the light that shines on the weave. Story yarns are the same: a woven rope of characters, narrative and plot points pull the entire tale together while, here and there, a strand can catch the light. Some story yarns are so strong that other writers can spread out their elements, and then reweave them into another pattern that shows what you didn’t see before. Gregory Maguire did this with Wicked and Joan Aiken rewove Jane Austen’s Emma into her own Jane Fairfax. I love this technique but the one I love even more is when a writer pulls one of the glinting ends at the edge of a story and teases a whole new tale from that thread. T. K. Thorne did this in 2011 when she pulled the bright thread of a character from the book of Genesis and created a tale named Noah’s Wife. At last, the Lady…