Deborah Calling

Book of Deborah #2

by Avraham Azrieli

The author of the bestselling Deborah Rising continues the fascinating story of the Biblical prophetess Deborah in this entrancing work of visionary fiction—a tale of danger, mysticism, intrigue, and daring for fans of The Red Tent, The Mists of Avalon, and The Alchemist . Deborah’s father dreamed that, one day, she would become a prophet—a seemingly impossible dream for a woman in a patriarchal society. To see her father’s dream come true, Deborah made the cunning decision to become a man and sought out a mysterious elixirist who can turn women into men. Under the elixirist Kassite’s tutelage and training, Deborah learns the essential traits of masculinity and steadily grows stronger, building muscle and willpower. But Kassite requests something in he needs Deborah's help to escape the tannery and return to his homeland. It is the beginning of another thrilling adventure through the desert—a cat and mouse chase between Deborah and her violent fiancé who still hunts her, a chance meeting with an ancient healer with a prophetic message, and a revelatory spiritual experience in an abandoned cave. As she continues on the path God has laid before her, Deborah witnesses the darkness that can take hold in the hearts and souls of men—evil that causes her to reflect on the wisdom, insight, and inspiration she has gained from the women in her life. Will becoming a man truly help her become a prophetess, or might there be another path? Visionary dreams, a mysterious eagle, and an extraordinary band of ex-slaves will help Deborah find the answer . . . and ultimately her calling. A riveting adventure tale derived from traditional biblical fiction, Deborah Calling imagines the life of one of the most famous figures from the Old Testament as she continues on her path to becoming a prophet.

432 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 25, 2017

About the author

Avraham Azrieli writes books and screenplays. His first novel was The Masada Complex (a political thriller), followed by the Israeli spy novels The Jerusalem Inception and The Jerusalem Assassin, as well as Christmas for Joshua (an interfaith family drama), The Mormon Candidate (a political thriller), Thump (a courtroom drama featuring sexual harassment and racism), and The Bootstrap Ultimatum (a mystery involving the commercialization of Memorial Day). More recently, he has written a series of novels inspired by the true story of the first woman to lead a nation in human history, starting with Deborah Rising (HarperCollins 2016), which won the 2017 Illumination Book Award for fiction, Deborah Calling (HarperCollins 2017), and continuing with Deborah Slaying and Deborah Striking. A prequel to the Deborah series, The Elixirist, was published in 2020. The Plot to Save America, a mystery set in an authoritarian America, came out in 2022.
Besides fiction, he has also authored Your Lawyer on a Short Leash - A Guide to Dealing with Lawyers and One Step Ahead – A Mother of Seven Escaping Hitler’s Claws, an acclaimed WWII true story, which inspired the musical By Wheel and by Wing.
While growing up in Israel, Avraham received an extensive Talmudic education and performed his mandatory military service in the IDF. After attending law school, he served as a law clerk at the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. He later earned an advanced law degree from Columbia University in New York City, served as a law clerk at the Federal District Court, and started his legal career with Davis Polk & Wardwell. He has advocated for clients before trial and appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. He currently lives near Washington DC. Like Ben Teller, the protagonist in The Mormon Candidate and The Bootstrap Ultimatum, Avraham often rides his motorcycle in the mountainous forests of western Maryland.
To learn more, visit www.AzrieliBooks.com
Avraham Azrieli's Books:
The Jerusalem Inception - "Boldly realistic plotlines and genuine, well-developed characters. Highly recommended!" Yahoo News/Politics. "Protagonist Jerusalem Gerster is the quintessential recruit." NY Daily News.
The Jerusalem Assassin - "Action-packed escapade ... memorable cast of characters ... pages turn as fast as the plot twists and locales shift, taking the reader from Paris to Zurich to Amsterdam to Tel Aviv." Jewish News.
The Masada Complex - "Brims with gritty authenticity ... a genuine treat!" David Liss, author of Conspiracy of Paper, winner of Edgar. "Riveting portrayal of global intrigue!" Stella Pope Duarte, author of If I Die in Juaréz, winner of the 2009 American Book Award.
The Bootstrap Ultimatum - "The real magic here is Azrieli's incredible ability to create well-developed characters as well as his skill in knowing how to draw in his readers." Examiner. “Fast-paced action thriller ... but also full of heart. Sure to keep readers on the edge of their seats." Hollywood Book Reviews. "Riveting. It doesn't get any better than this, folks!!" Sun Francisco Book Review.
The Mormon Candidate - "Plotted like a cinematic thriller, Azrieli has come up with a very powerful novel. At work here is his extraordinary magic in making his readers as eager as his protagonist in uncovering the truth and thus effectively creating pervasive fear and suspense. Sure to keep you up late against your better judgment. Don't say I didn't warn you." Norm Goldman, Examiner.
Thump - "A light-hearted romp through sexual proclivities ... the characters are lovable ... the irreverence is delightful. Thought-provoking. Interesting. Unconventional. Recommended!" U.S. Review of Books.
Christmas for Joshua - "In its own gentle way, the book is as much a page-turner as Azrieli's thrillers - pulling the reader into complex personal and familial conflicts." The Jewish Journal.

Reviews

[Heather]

I haven't read the first book in this series that imagines the life of Deborah from the biblical book of Judges.  I received this book as part of a blog tour but it was not difficult to understand what had come before.  We know in the bible Deborah is leading the tribes of Israel but how did a woman get to this position of authority?  This story posits that her father had a dream that said that she would be a prophet.  She can not imagine how this could happen as a woman so she decides to take a potion that would turn her into a man.  Obviously, hormone therapy wasn't available then so she is getting scammed by the people who are supposedly helping her.

She has a lot of internalized misogyny.  This isn't surprising given the thoughts about women in her time.  But the men who are supposedly helping her keep drilling it into her head.  Women are stupid and emotional.  Men are in all ways superior.  I started highlighting these comments as they came up in the book.

“Girls aren’t stupid.” “It is not a matter of stupidity, but of destiny. Women exist to keep the home—make food, sew clothes, bear children, care for infants. That is why the gods made women fit for domesticated submission—passive, temperamental, small-minded, and anxious."



Deborah’s face flushed with shame. The mere sight of someone resembling Zariz had caused her to cast off all masculine strength and posture, instantly regressing to the foolish girl she had once been.



Kassite might view it as yet another manifestation of feminine weakness.

 

There are more but that is the general idea.  They keep telling her that she needs to search inside herself to get the final inspiration to complete her transformation to a man.  I was hoping that this led to her realizing her strength as a woman and deciding that she didn't need to change herself externally in order to be able to be a prophet.  The book could have easily had that be the outcome.  I thought that was what it was leading to.  Instead she decides to embrace her life as a woman because she has a magical dream where she sees herself dispensing justice as a woman.  What?

When she declares this to her "mentors", they dismiss her ideas and no longer accord her the same respect as when she was trying to be masculine.

“I am disappointed,” Kassite said. “You still think like a girl.”

Obviously the constraints of the time and place restrict how "Smash the Patriarchy" the story can go but I wanted more realization of feminine strength than was seen in this book.

This is part of a continuing series.  You don't know at the end how she rises in power.  This is a story that I would love to hear but I'm not sure that I will be satisfied with this author's imagining of the story. This book works fine as an adventurous historical fiction tale but it was worrisome to read this much internalized misogyny that isn't disputed in the text from a male author.


There are also some anachronisms in the story especially in regard to the horses.  I'm a horse history nerd so that might not bother anybody else.

 

This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published at Reading Reality

Deborah Calling picks up right where Deborah Rising left off. But for readers who haven’t read the stories back to back, or who don’t feel like reading Deborah Rising but want to jump into a book where the protagonist gets to be proactive instead of always reactive, Deborah Calling does an excellent job of bringing readers up to speed.

Deborah in the Bible was a Judge and a prophet. In this story, although she is still very young she is already having prophetic dreams. The clever way that the author brings readers up to date is for Deborah to have a remembering dream where she dreams the events of her life to the point where this story begins.

As this story begins, Deborah is well on her way to fulfilling her quest to become a man. She is one third of the way through the transformation process dictated by the Elixirist, a great potion maker from the neighboring kingdom of Moab. He is famous for turning 3,000 Moabite women into men in order to stave off an Egyptian invasion of his homeland. Or so the story goes.

Deborah wants to become a man because being a woman has brought her nothing but pain and injustice. As a woman, she cannot inherit her father’s land. She can’t testify in court against the man who killed her sister. She can’t even testify in court against the man who attempted to kill her. And as he is also her husband, as the man responsible for her only he can testify on her behalf. We can all guess how well that goes.

Murdering her isn’t even a crime, because she is female. Being a man may not be easy, but it has to be better than the treatment she’s received as a woman. And as only men can inherit, it is only by returning to her homeland as a man that she can take back the land that was stolen from her family.

As portrayed in this story, the land of Israel was hardly a “land of milk and honey”. Judges could be capricious and cruel, and for women especially, life could be very gruesome, as Deborah’s story reveals.

But the road to becoming a man is difficult. It has led her from being a chattel in the Judge’s household to being a slave in a tannery far away. But a slave who is disguised as a boy, the first part of her transformation.

She has two quests. One is to become a man, return to her homeland, and become the Judge and prophet that her father dreamed she would be. But to get there she has to fulfill a different quest first. To find and free two Moabite slaves from two different masters so that they can return to their own homeland before they die. One of those old slaves is the famous Elixirist who will provide the means for her transformation.

And they are both lying to her through whatever teeth they have left. Which does not stop Deborah from becoming, if not a man, at least from becoming the proactive, even-tempered, adventurous and logical person she was meant to be – male or female

Escape Rating B: The Deborah in Deborah Calling has considerably more agency than she did in Deborah Rising. In the first book, she was a person that things mostly happened TO, and then she reacted to what happened to her. Until something even worse happened, and then she reacted to that – if any reactions were open to her other than to take the whipping or whatever other terrible thing was about to be visited upon her. Not that she didn’t have an admittedly cockeyed plan, but most of the time, she was passive or defensive or on the run or all of the above.

The difference in Deborah Calling is that she becomes the lead actor in her own life. While bad things still continue to happen to her, she definitely spends more of the story acting before she is acted upon, and planning for future events (even bad ones) than she did in the previous book. She goes from being a follower, and sometimes a seemingly hapless one, to being a leader.

It may be obvious to the reader (it certainly was to this reader) that Sallan and Kassite are using Deborah for their own ends, not that fulfilling their purpose does not also help her. And it was equally obvious to this reader which of the two of them was actually the Elixirist. But it does make sense that Deborah herself could not figure it out – as Deborah Calling ends she is just barely 15, not nearly experienced enough to have the cynicism required to figure their particular charade out.

There is still a villain in this piece, throughout the story, Deborah is pursued by the thoroughly evil Seesya, who is also her husband. Again, this is one of the many reasons why Deborah wants to become male. As a woman, she had no right to refuse to marry Seesya – even though he had just had her sister stoned to death for a crime she did not commit.

But over the course of the two books, Seesya continues to read more like a bogeyman, like a caricature of evil or even an embodiment of an evil being than he does like a villainous but human man. His personality is so completely warped that there is nothing there but malice, and it makes him seem almost supernatural, certainly to Deborah but sometimes even to the reader. He has also survived so many near-death experiences that one does start to wonder.

Speaking of wondering, Deborah’s story is not over. As Deborah Calling ends she has decided to return to her homeland as she is, but the story of how she gets back and what happens to change her into the Judge and prophet that we know she becomes from the Bible, is in a book yet to be written.

As a reader who was expecting the story to conclude at the end of Deborah Calling, this was a disappointment. I hope that the next book, and the conclusion of Deborah’s story, comes soon! I still want to see Seesya get what’s coming to him.

[Gina Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is still on the move......

I thought this would be the conclusion of the first book, but it's not. Lots of action, drama and another cliffhanger, well have to see when the third book is finished.

[Susan Keefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful and thought provoking story.

After reading the beautifully written Deborah Rising, I couldn’t wait to read this continuation of the author’s fictional story of the life of Deborah, one of the most well-known prophet in the Old Testament.
The story continues as Deborah is desperately trying to become a man, certain that this is the only way that her father’s prophecy that she will become a great prophet can come true. She believes this is the only way she can succeed, as in her time women are at the mercy of their husbands, and it is not possible for them to own anything, so she is taking an elixir to become a male so she can succeed in bringing the word of her god, Yehweh, to the Hebrew people.
Her life has already been terribly traumatic, and fraught with danger, as she has been forced to flee her home Emanuel, and the anger of Seesya, her husband, the son of Judge Zifron their leader, and a cruel murderer.
The story commences at the tannery where Deborah has taken the male name of Borah. It is as Borah that her quest continues, and she helps Kassite the slave manager of the Tannery, and all the slaves escape, fulfilling promises she has made to those she has loved, and who have helped her on the way.
As she is forced to return to her past, she discovers that even in the guise of a male her journey is perilous, and she must confront her fears, and in order to survive carry out acts which are abhorrent to her, and against her faith. However, she is determined to follow the path she believes is her fate and is guided by her dreams, and the visions she sees in them, as she rides over the land on the back of an eagle.
As I read this powerful book I found myself constantly being amazed by Deborah’s strength and resilience, her absolute faith was very inspiring, and this just grew and grew as her story unfolded.
The people she meets on her travels, their stories, the actions of those around her, and the way they influenced her life, tested her, and then enabled her to go forward to pursue her true calling are wonderfully told by the author. Throughout the reader can only be humbled by her bravery and faith.
I found this story absolutely enthralling and couldn’t put the book down, and I would recommend it as fascinating read.

[Lauralee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deborah Calling picks up where Deborah Rising left off. The novel reimagines the early life of the prophetess Deborah from the Bible. Deborah is disguised as a man who works in a tannery. As she works, she learns how to grow physically stronger by gaining more muscle. One day, she and her master, Kassite, escape the tannery to rescue Kassite’s friend, Sallan. It is a risky and dangerous task because they may run into her abusive husband, Seesya. As Deborah undertakes this perilous road, she learns that God may have called her for a great purpose.

While I did not see much resemblance to the Biblical Deborah, I am starting to see it here. Deborah is slowly learning how to become a leader and a warrior. I adored her because she is tough as nails. She reminds me a bit of Katniss Everdeen. I also like how Deborah is starting to learn to love herself and that she does not want to take the form of someone else. Deborah is becoming more self-confident and gathering more courage. Thus, I liked how her character has evolved from Deborah Rising, and I can’t wait to see how she is portrayed in the third book.

Overall, this book is about courage, faith, forgiveness, and self-identity. The message of the novel is to be proud of yourself. The world of ancient Israel seems very realistic, and I can see how the world was a harsh place for both men and women. Deborah Calling was very well-written and thought-provoking. While I loved Deborah Rising, I have to confess that Deborah Calling surpasses its predecessor. It has got me excited for book three, and I wish that it was already out now. In the meantime, I will definitely re-read the series again to satisfy my craving for the wait! Readers will love the Deborah series, not only because it is a fast-paced and adventurous historical tale, but it features a strong relatable heroine that embarks on a journey of faith.
(Note: This book was given to me as part of a blog tour in exchange for an honest review.)

[Jessica Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the saga continues, will Deborah finally fulfill her personal wish to be a man? And will it impact her true calling?

Deborah has overcome loss, hardship, and physical labor to seek out the elixirist and become a man. After finally locating him at a tannery, she agrees to work for him will he prepares all of the doses of the male elixir. Now that she has completed the first two doses, she is ready for the final task. But first they must return to Edom to retrieve the final ingredients. On the way, they must pass through her hometown and collect Kassite’s old friend that runs the basket factory for the judge. This trip proves to be even more deadly than Deborah could have considered. Will anyone recognize her? If they do, will her quest be over? And what of her true calling as one of Yahweh’s prophets?

This book picks up directly where the first book ended. And the excitement picks up even more. After being pursed throughout much of the first book, Deborah must now face some of her past demons. Her remarkable character shines throughout this book as does the enjoyable banter between her and Kassite. What happens will surprise many readers as it is not expected, but with more twists also come more turns. I keep thinking that the story will be over and it will be where it is picked up in the bible, but it just keeps on continuing. I’m not sure which direction it will go next, but you can bet I’ll be reading it!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within are my own.

[Israel Drazin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Avraham Azrieli is a superb writer. I read and enjoyed every book that he wrote, including the first volume about the famous biblical prophet Deborah. Azrieli writes with a deep understanding of his characters and with sympathy for them. We come to like his characters. His books have suspense and action and keen insights.
As a biblical scholar who wrote about three dozen books on the Bible, where I interpreted what the Bible is actually saying instead of the moral lessons that clerics read into the text, including a book on Judges where Deborah’s story is told, I can attest that Azrieli has a deep understanding of this biblical prophet and the conditions of the time when she lived and the difficulties she faced, both inside of Israel and outside. Reading Azrieli, we not only understand what motivated Deborah to act as she did and where and how she acquired the knowledge to act, but we come also to understand the other biblical prophets as well.
This is a wonderful and insightful book, an enjoyable story. I liked it very much.

[LISA RAMSAY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Azrieli continues the story of Deborah's path to prophet. He is very skilled at painting a picture with words. As you read each of his books, but especially this series, you are transported back in time and can imagine yourself riding along with Deborah on her journey. Do not read these books out of order or you will be lost. This is Book 2 of hopefully 3, Deborah faces a dilemma not too much different than most of us today: " Can I get what I want and still be true to myself. " Deborah continues to wrestle with her identity as she tries to figure out how best to fulfill her destiny. I highly recommend starting with Deborah Rising and moving to Deborah Calling for your end of summer riveting read.

[Burning Thoughts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, well-written novel of an Old Testament prophet who was previously unknown to me.
The author has an excellent ability to create memorable scenes, particularly the climax in the depths of a mine. He also yields apt insights into character and situation.

My drive to read further in the book was diminished by the severity shown in scenes which wasn't balanced by sufficient exaltation in others.

I wish there was a map with place names. I prefer that information visually rather than in prose.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

a real page turner, fascinating story watching this abused, frightened child turn into a strong woman