monagustafsonaffinito   CONVERSATIONS

Soon I’ll be rolling out “Figs & Pomegranates & Special Cheeses: a Biblical Love Story.” The layout is ready to go, just waiting for the new cover art to be finished. I’ll be meeting next week with the artist.

If you’ve been following me, you know that.” “Figs & Pomegranates & Special Cheeses: a Biblical Love Story.” is a newly edited version of “Mrs. Job.” (It has been through content editors twice and through copy editors the same number of times. To say nothing of my own perfectionistic editing and copy-editing.)

So now I’m offering my inventory of “Mrs. Job” at a reduced rate. Just click on the cover photo to order through PayPal:

Soft Cover   $10.00 plus postage and handling (and tax for MN residents.)

Hard Cover $15.00 plus postage and handling (and tax for MN residents.)

Let me know if you want it signed in a particular way.

 I’m including a copy here of the back cover comments. (click to make it larger.)

So why a new edition? Again, those of you who have been with me know that the big problem with “Mrs. Job” was the title. Everyone, it seems, read “Job” as if it had to do with paid employment, rather than the book of Job, one of the books of wisdom in the Hebrew Testament. Also, given that I left the Ph.D. after my name, people took it to be one of a few things: A self-help book for married women seeking paid employment; a heavy psychological tome; a – liberal, or maybe fundamentalist – rant.

But it’s none of those things. It is the love story of fictional Dara, the wife of Biblical Job, from her childhood and lifelong friendship with Adah, through her marriage to Job, the growth of family and wealth, through the biblical trials and their aftermath.

The cover of “Mrs. Job” is lovely, but “Figs & Pomegranates & Special Cheeses” will be more romantic and colorful, more likely, I hope, to grab the eye and illustrate the basics of the story.

I’ll bet you’re thinking I’m in danger this time that the book will be filed in the cookbook section. I’m hoping not. My expectation is that the visual cover and the full title will help to avoid that.

As for the source of the new title. It comes from her mother’s words in a conversation they have shortly before Dara’s marriage.

 “Oh Dara, I did feel that way

about your father when we first married,

but love changes over time.

I guess you could say at first it is like

feasting on figs and

pomegranates and special cheeses,

and later it is like enjoying the

evening potage. The thrill may not be

so great later on, but each day it fills

the empty hole that would be hunger

if you did not have each other.”