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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Johnie R Dove’s Nativity is Christian historical fiction set in first-century Judea, where Mary, a fifteen-year-old girl from Nazareth, is preparing to marry Joseph, a village carpenter, when the angel Gabriel tells her she will give birth to Jesus. Her news reaches a family already touched by an extraordinary promise, since Mary’s elderly relative Elizabeth is expecting a son after years of childlessness following an angelic message to her husband, the temple priest Zechariah. As Mary’s family comes to understand what has happened, Joseph must decide how the future he imagined with her will continue. Their lives soon become part of a much larger movement across the Roman Empire when Caesar Augustus orders a census, requiring Joseph to register in Bethlehem as Mary’s pregnancy advances.
Johnie R Dove’s Nativity follows Mary and Joseph as angelic messages reshape the future they expected through the coming birth of Jesus. Dove does a beautiful job with period details, breathing life into first-century Judea. Mary is wonderfully drawn, and there’s no question that her quiet certainty makes her fascinating. Dove develops her into a fully fleshed-out young woman, and that comes through beautifully in Ein Kerem, where Mary confides in Elizabeth, the elderly relative whose own miraculous pregnancy gives Mary someone who understands her news. Dove shines in making Judea a character in its own right, from descriptions of Jericho’s crowded lower market beneath hanging herbs to Jerusalem, where white limestone gleams across the Temple Mount above streets filled with pilgrims. Intelligently written and completely immersive, readers who enjoy great Christian historical fiction will adore this.
