Last Days in Moav

"Suspenseful historical novel...about family duty and finding the courage to love." —Foreword Reviews

Romance, mysticism, and betrayal come together in a story of empowerment set in the harsh desert of biblical times.

16-year-old Milcah and her twin brother Gidon have a mysterious healing gift that makes them outsiders in their tribe. Unjustly accused by a neighbor of killing his goats, and promised in marriage to a scoundrel, Milcah undertakes a dangerous journey in a bid to have some control over her future.

Told by alternating narrators, including a dead brother who speaks to us from the spirit world, this historical fiction YA novel explores the passions and dramas of an Israelite family as they wait to cross into the Promised Land.

Maybe if you knew that my story took place over three thousand years ago, you would accept its truth more readily.

This is the story of my sister Milcah and my brother Gidon, the twin healers. It's the story of a prophetic gift, a shocking betrothal scheme, a dying Amorite and an upstanding Gadite, a miracle baby, and more.

Let's begin then. I exhale in orange today. Orange is the color of beginnings and endings. And the story begins, as most do, with an ending. My ending, in case you haven't guessed.

"Israelite twins with healing gifts feature in Sharon Reiss Baker’s suspenseful historical novel Last Days in Moav, about family duty and finding the courage to love.

Decades after his ancestors’ exodus from Egypt, Netanel dies in a desert flood. Thereafter, he watches over his siblings Milcah and Gidon through an otherworldly veil. In a mysterious act involving golden light, he aids the twins when they ask for help to heal a goat. Later, the twins offer healings from “beyond” that invoke God, employing folk herbal remedies. Nobody knows whether their abilities are unholy magic or genuine blessings. Gidon’s knack for predicting catastrophic weather causes further unrest.

The alternating perspectives result in tension. The twins navigate tribal differences; their enthusiastic brother Avidan fills in key details; and Netanel addresses his future audience—people who “send images across oceans, shoot into space, and witness celestial explosions”—with oracular urgency, expressing his yearning interventions in his siblings’ lives. His fabulistic narration is a tantalizing complement to the notion that both the living and the dead have vital stories to tell.

The crisp, straightforward prose covers the death of Moses and the tribe’s anticipated crossing into a promised land alongside the twins’ desires for their own marriages, despite fears that their strange vocations make them unmarriageable. Their community is fleshed out in terms of their shared living spaces and chores, and in terms of how they respond to the twins’ healing work, with their reactions ranging from tacit approval to resentment. When a feud threatens Milcah with an unwanted betrothal, it dials up the book’s weighty considerations of obligation and injustice.

In Last Days in Moav, a spiritual novel set in biblical times, preternatural siblings mature through instances of strife and reconciliation."

—Foreword Reviews

"I absolutely adored Sharon Reiss Baker’s gripping, enchanting new book, Last Days in Moav. The story transported me back to Biblical days, when mystical desert winds swirled and ancient tribes clashed. Through riveting historical detail and beautifully rendered narrative voices, Last Days in Moav explores the strength and tenacity of a family facing the fight of their lives. I couldn’t put it down."

—Stacy Nockowitz, author of The Prince of Steel Pier, a National Jewish Book Award Winner

“A ghost story, a love story, and a history lesson, Last Days in Moav brings to life a fascinating moment of biblical lore. Deeply researched and carefully plotted, Sharon Reiss Baker seamlessly weaves in biblical history with compelling characters that will transport readers to life at the edge of the Land.”

—Tammar Stein, author of The Six-Day Hero and The Treasure of Tel Maresha