Midwives' Escape: from Egypt to Jericho

by Maggie Anton

WHY IS THIS NOVEL DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER NOVELS?
After years of archaeological research and biblical studies, award-winning author Maggie Anton has created a historical novel filled with adventure, warfare, and romance that is true to both Torah and to history.

You’ve probably seen the live-action movie The Ten Commandments and the animated The Prince of Egypt. Both start with enslaved Hebrews, then Moses with the Burning Bush and the Ten Plagues, followed by the Hebrew’s escape through the parted Red Sea and, at the end, Moses bringing down the Ten Commandments at Sinai.
That is where this novel begins. An Egyptian mother and daughter, Asenet and Shifra, a midwife and her apprentice, wake up on the morning of the 10th plague to find Asenet’s
husband and son, both firstborns, dead. Asenet’s sister Pua is married to a Hebrew and urges Asenet’s family to leave Egypt with them, which they reluctantly do, along with Asenet’s carpenter father and his two apprentices. Recognizing that the Hebrew God is more powerful than any of the Egyptians’ gods, other non-Hebrews come along on the exodus, including Hittite and Nubian palace guards. Once hearing, and accepting, God’s commandments at Mt. Sinai, they—and readers—join the Hebrews on their forty-year journey to The Promised Land. Together, they share trials and tribulations, and eventually make new homes in the new land.

292 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2025

About the author

Maggie Anton is an award-winning author of historical fiction, as well as a Talmud scholar with expertise in Jewish women’s history. She was born Margaret Antonofsky in Los Angeles, California, where she still resides. In 1992 she joined a women’s Talmud class taught by Rachel Adler. There, to her surprise, she fell in love with Talmud, a passion that has continued unabated for over thirty years. Intrigued that the great Jewish scholar Rashi had no sons, only daughters, she started researching the family and their community.
Thus the award-winning trilogy Rashi’s Daughters was born in 2004, to be followed by National Jewish Book Award finalist, Rav Hisda’s Daughter: Apprentice and its sequel, Enchantress. Then she switched to nonfiction in 2016, winning the Gold Ben Franklin Award in the religion category for Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbis Had to Say about You-Know What, a lighthearted in-depth tour of sexuality within the Talmud. In 2022, she returned to fiction with the Independent Publishers’ Silver Award-winning The Choice: A Novel of Love, Faith, and the Talmud, a wholly transformative novel that takes characters inspired by Chaim Potok and ages them into young adults in 1950s Brooklyn. Her latest historical novel is The Midwives’ Escape: from Egypt to Jericho, which describes the Exodus from the point of view of an Egyptian mother and daughter who join the Hebrews to follow Moses to the Promised Land.
Since 2005, Anton has lectured about the research behind her books at hundreds of venues throughout North America, Europe, and Israel. She still studies women and Talmud, albeit mostly online at https://www.conservativeyeshiva.org/l.... You can follow her blog and contact her at her website, www.maggieanton.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Goodreads. And if you liked this book, please give it a nice review at all the usual websites. Maggie has been married to David Parkhurst, her books’ illustrator, since 1970. They have two children, six grandchildren, and one cat.