Description: Recently widowed, Rivkah refuses to submit to the Torah law compelling her to marry her husband's brother and instead flees Kedesh, hoping to use her talents as a scribe to support herself. Without the protections of her father, Kedesh's head priest, and the safety of the city of refuge, Rivkah soon discovers that the cost of recklessness is her own freedom.
Malakhi has secretly loved Rivkah for years, but he never imagined his older brother's death would mean wedding her himself. After her disappearance, he throws himself into the ongoing fight against the Canaanites instead of dwelling on all he has lost. But with impending war looming over Israel, Rivkah's father comes to Malakhi with an impossible request.
As the enemies that Rivkah and Malakhi face from without and within Israel grow more threatening each day, is it too late for the restoration their wounded souls seek?
My Thoughts: My favorite thing about Connilyn's books is that they always engage with background characters of scripture whom we rarely think of. This book is particularly engaging because it deals with a few different laws which would have affected the Israelites, laws meant for protection but which might have felt cruel and unjust.
I found Rivkah's character to be particularly relatable, a woman whose husband has left her widowed and in need of a kinsman redeemer to marry her in his place. There are so many things going on in Rivkah's heart and so much that her family overlooks while telling her to get over her pain. Knowing who I was at the age of eighteen, the same as Rivkah, I imagine that I would have made the same decision as she did.
I have more complicated feelings about the rest of the characters. Malakhi was extremely young, and so I don't fault him for his part in what happened as he was clearly doing his best. And Rivkah's and Malakhi's families acted in love, even if they also did not take the time to hear the cries of a woman feeling lost, forgotten, and bartered off. But I also felt that they couldn't look past their own opinions about what Rivkah should do and feel, to see why she felt as she actually did.
Until the Mountains Fall beautifully captured the complexities of family life and how a situation can arise that is both everyone's fault and yet no ones. Trapped in a situation where no one but Malakhi saw the pain Rivkah truly carried, and he was too young yet to help, Rivkah fled what seemed to be the culmination of all her suffering.
Of all Connilyn's books, I believe that this is my favorite.
I have provided an honest review after receiving a copy of the book from the author and publisher.
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