Mara, Daughter of the Nile

Mara, Daughter of the Nile, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Mara is a proud and beautiful slave girl who yearns for freedom. In order to gain it, she finds herself playing the dangerous role of double spy for two arch enemies - each of whom supports a contender for the throne of Egypt.

Against her will, Mara finds herself falling in love with one of her masters, the noble Sheftu, and she starts to believe in his plans of restoring Thutmose III to the throne. But just when Mara is ready to offer Sheftu her help and her heart, her duplicity is discovered, and a battle ensues in which both Mara's life and the fate of Egypt are at stake.

The description on the back of the book is exactly so - and it sounds kinda fun and dramatic and romantic, which is maybe why I feel so let down. Mara is good, but there were just some. . . parts. . . which made me really fall out of sympathy for the characters. The book takes place ostensibly in the reign of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, one of the famous women rulers of Egypt. The country is in turmoil, drained by her extravagent self-aggrandizing demands and insistence on two massive obelisks in the middle of a temple. An underground revolution quietly plots to remove her from the throne and place her half-brother in her stead. And okay, here is where I began to lose all liking for the romantic leads - part of the reason that they're trying to get rid of Hatshepsut is because she has the effontry to style herself king rather than royal wife and consort, and prefers erecting monuments to fighting wars. And sure, make the argument that we're trying to be historically accurate, and that those could have been valid points against her during the period of the book, rather just sexist excuses to get rid of her. But then you sort of have to go - but the rest of the book is wildly inaccurate! Why stick perniciously to something which casts your heroes in such a repugnant light, then play fast and loose with the rest of the facts?

And yes, I'm no preeminent scholar in egyptology and my information comes from wikipedia, but I would still like to point out that Hatshepsut ruled for about 22 years, not 15, her name was chiseled off by Thutmose III, twenty years later, rather than by her father Thutmose I, and her reign was marked by peace and prosperity, and she was not indolent towards foreign enemies. I admit, history changes with time, and the theory that Hatshepsut and Thutmose III actually got along, and he only took her name off things later to ensure a smooth succession is a pretty recent one. In 1953, the whole chiseling-off-the-name-to-erase-the-memory-of-a-cruel-ruler would have seemed pretty good stuff for a novel. But now it just makes her revolutionaries seem petty and only interested in their own advancement. But sure, let's read the book and pretend it's all fiction, and see Hatshepsut as the author writes her - a metallic voiced automaton. Seen in that light, the story is a little less off-putting.

But seriously. Some of the paragraphs in Mara really evoke the atmosphere of subtle danger and opulence, others just evoke. . . England?

'Right again. I am in the full confidence of the queen. It's most convenient. . . Aye, Her Majesty distributes bribes as lavishly as she does everything else!'

and

'That scurvy Architect! Yet he is her favorite.'

Scandalous! It's just a little jarring to be reading along, and then have to picture this "noble" Egyptian in like, a smoking jacket and monocle. Sheftu's nobility is apparent in his actions, namely that he really hates killing people unless he has to, and steals money and goods from graves. No? Not convinced? Then how about because:

He is young and tall...and well favored, with eyes like the night...When he smiles - it is like a magician's potion.

Oh, okay, now I understand. The main character, Mara, suffers from a fatal case of overconfidence. She's so confident, actually, that she becomes unsympathetic - her smirky ways and easy tricks just make you want to show her up. She's initally really rude to the only truly sympathetic character in the book - Inanni, a Syrian princess, who is, according to Mara, dumpy, sweaty, and stupid. Mara, of course, with her own glorious and unusual blue eyes and filmy garments learns to feel Pity out of her most Compassionate Heart, and kindly arranges for Inanni to be sent home at the end of the book. It's like you can actually see her heart growing two sizes that day. The reader can also be comfortable in attributing tender feelings to Mara because in the end, she remembers to free a slave she used to work with, although whether that makes up for her high-handed treatment of the other servants in the palace (and her own amusement at so doing) is perhaps best left unanswered.

Despite all my Issues with Mara, it really does beguile you a bit despite itself, which is a mark of how well done it is. Even though I longed for comeuppance for both Mara and Sheftu and I hoped sincerely that five years later finds them both unhappily disillusioned by Thutmose III, I admit that I got swept up in the denouement, hoping that rescue would come in the nick of time and that Sheftu would believe her and forgive her, even though she was patently a spy. And it does all end happily, although oh my GOD, how is it that someone whipped to the point of unconsciousness (several times) can just stand up and walk around in the end with no greater problem than a little soreness when it gets jarred by the litter ride to her lover's house, because they're not even going to go to the doctor first, and did they even have counts and countesses in Egypt, and, and, and...