The Source

When an archaeological team sets to work at Makor, an ancient city in Galilee, it unearths not only shards of pottery but, in James Michener's hands, the story of a people, the Jews.

God must have had something special in mind for the region south and east of the Mediterranean, the "cradle of civilization," for it spawned fierce, troublesome, brilliant and gifted people. . .Persians, Jews, Arabs. . .who gave the world the concept of monotheism and three of its great religions.

Of all these tribes it is the Jews who have had the widest dispersal and made the greatest cultural contributions. Through the characters we meet in Michener's fiction, we understand better how this came to be.