Song of Songs: A Novel of the Queen of Sheba

TWO SISTERS. TWO THRONES. ONE LEGEND THAT NEVER TOLD THE WHOLE TRUTH.

“A rousing plunge into the power politics of the ancient world, peopled with legendary characters.” —Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“A notably original reinterpretation of an ancient legend ensconced within an epic tale of political power and romantic longing.” —Kirkus Reviews

History remembers her as a queen who rode north with a caravan of riches to test a king’s wisdom, then went home no better known than before. That is the story you were told. It isn’t the story that happened.

Makeda is six years old when a flood tears her family apart, sweeping away her half-sister Bilkis and leading to the deaths of her mother and father. Despite her hardship, Makeda rises to become ruler of Saba on terms entirely her own, proving her right to the throne through a trial meant to break her. But the dam that keeps her people alive is failing, and no one in Saba knows how to save it.

Bilkis survives too. Through grit and manipulation, she becomes Queen of Israel. And she will do whatever the crown requires, things the scribes chose not to record.

When Saba’s dam crumbles past mending, Makeda travels to Israel in search of the one man who might know how to save it: Yetzer, the exiled master builder raising Jerusalem’s greatest temple stone by stone. What she finds instead is the sister she thought she’d lost, a throne built on secrets, and a man worth risking everything for — if Bilkis will let her keep any of it.

SONG OF SONGS reimagines the legend of the Queen of Sheba as history might actually have lived it: two queens the Bible barely named, a rivalry it never recorded, and a reckoning it left out entirely.

“A stunning novel of love, lust and vengeance, restoring the lost feminine voice to one of the great Biblical tales. You will never think of the Queen of Sheba the same way again.” —Kamran Pasha, author of Mother of the Believers and Shadow of the Swords

For readers of The Red Tent, Circe, and Wisdom’s Daughter — this is ancient-world historical fiction that doesn’t look away.

Note: This novel is intended for mature readers.