The Secret Chord: A Novel (41 page)

I relied heavily on three other reference works:
The Jewish Study Bible
(Oxford),
City of David: The Story of Ancient Jerusalem
by Ahron Horovitz (Lambda) and
Life in Biblical Israel
by Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager.

My rabbi, Caryn Broitman, offered many valuable insights. I am grateful to Richard North Patterson and Bob Tyler of the Cohen Group for introducing me to Dr. Joseph Draznin, who gave me the benefit of his strategic thinking as to how David and Yoav might have managed their assault on Yebus.

My younger son, Bizu Horwitz, was a marvelous research assistant during our trip to Israel, playing the agile young David to my weary Shaul as he sprinted ahead of me up rocky hills behind Ein Gedi.

I am blessed with remarkable publishing teams, especially in the United States and Australia, and I would like to especially thank Paul Slovak, editor extraordinaire, and my agent and friend Kris Dahl.

I’m thankful to my early readers Darleen Bungey, Elinor and Tony Horwitz, Christine Farmer and Laure Sudreau-Rippe. But most especially, as always, the incomparable and indispensable Graham Thorburn.

In 2005, my nine-year-old son made the unusual decision to learn the harp, which started me reflecting on that other long-ago boy-harpist. At his bar mitzvah five years later, he played an arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s classic “Hallelujah.” So it is to Nathaniel that I owe both the inspiration for this book and the idea for its title.

West Tisbury, March 2015

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Table of Contents

Also by Geraldine Brooks

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Epigraph

A Note on Names

The Names

The Secret Chord

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

Afterword