Avigail from the King’s Mountain

This is a hauntingly beautiful story about reincarnation. Avigail lives on a kibbutz. She is drawn to a nearby valley where she steps through a time warp into an ancient biblical world of witches, mystic rites and primaeval medicine.

While she is with the witches, King Saul approaches to ask whether he will survive the battle with the army of Magog, amassed on the hills. Knowing that he is about to die, Avigail agrees to be his priestess, following the king on her white donkey. King Saul dies in the war against Magog, and David ascends to the throne. “I disliked the pretender king the moment I saw him,” says Avigail of David, considering the new king’s harp playing and his paean to the dead Saul in very bad taste. In the finale of the book, Avigail goes on to lead the people’s protest against the new king. The action is taut and believable, but most memorable is Nurit Zarchi’s poetic sensitivity to time, place and mood in nature.