Blind Man’s Labyrinth by Daryl Potter

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A Jewish civil war is tearing apart northern Israel. In the south, servants of the goddess Ashtaroth are abducting unwary refugees. Haim, an unwanted boy, escapes into this nightmarish landscape to find his way in a world gone mad.

92 BCE. A widow and an old scribe together raise Haim, a boy whose lineage cursed him from birth. When Haim is eleven years old, he runs away into a world populated by Samaritan bandits, a cultic pagan temple devoted to horror, and the white-robed priests of Qumran.

Desperate and lonely, Haim searches for community, friendship, and belonging while being plagued by a hunger for meaning that he cannot satisfy.

Blind Man’s Labyrinth is a lyrical historical fiction novel set near the end of the Maccabean period. If you like stories that explore the conflict between survival and morality and ask questions about how outcasts fight against socially systemic cycles of fear and violence in their quest for friendship, kinship, and meaning, then you will love this masterful follow-up to Daryl Potter’s award-winning Keziah’s Song.

Year first published: 2021