Review: Vessel of Fire by Elena Tucker.

Elena Tucker’s first book of her Time Pieces Trilogy which I thought was well written with enjoyable characters. She participated in an archaeological excavation about thirty years ago with her husband. When writing her story she did have some knowledge about archaeology and created an interesting story. This is a story of ancient and current characters who struggle with shared cultures united by the space of time. As you read you’ll go back and forth between the past and the present with interest and be amazed at the end how the two stories are related.

Vessel of Fire describes life centuries ago, the year C.E. 131, and a small village in the Holy Land near the Dead Sea during one of Judaism’s bravest and riskiest revolts against Rome. This is where fifth teen year old Tamar helped her father over the years as a potter apprentice. Her father was a wise man and when the Roman soldiers were headed to his village he placed all his coins in a vessel and buried it deep under his outdoor kiln oven and left it there. His family and the village people took some essential, packed up and travel on foot to mountains far away to hide in the caves. The higher they went the harder it was for the Romans to get to them. They weren’t there long when Tamar sneaked out during the night to head back to their village and hid in a cave she found before they left that no one knew about. Sometimes she and her family did not get along so she would go to that cave for tranquility. There are more scenes of violence and death of the ancient village people and how their story ended embedded throughout the book.

In this same area century’s later Archaeologist, Dr. Lem Fort begins excavating the ruins of ancient Beit Sha’al where he digs, literally into the past life of Tamar and her family. They were excavating in three locations in that area. Elena Tucker did a great job describing the procedures of the archaeologists and there findings. I was fascinated with the pottery and hand made tools they found and amazed how some of the items were in good shape after so many years buried in the dry soil of the land. Some of these items told a good amount of ancient history of the past people and cultures. ( )