This week on Big Words and Made Up Stories, I’m reviewing an excellent new novel by Amanda Bedzrah. “Leah: Unnoticed, Unwanted, Unloved” is the story of two sisters, the daughters of Laban, a somewhat unprincipled chap with an eye to the main chance. The story appears in the book of Genesis, and for the purposes of this review, I’m using the Message translation [version of The Bible].

Unnoticed. Unwanted. Unloved

The story begins the morning after Leah’s wedding to Jacob. Her husband is asleep, and it should be the beginning of a week’s honeymoon, filled with joy. However, this is how the book begins.

“He stirred slightly, and panic gripped her, fear seeped out with the sweat from her pores. Afraid and exhausted, she lay awake and trembling beside her new husband. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, the day she married the man her heart had yearned for all these years. But the horror of what the morning could bring left her fighting back fresh tears as pain pounded at her temples.”

Although I knew the story of Leah and her sister Rachel, I was gripped straight away. The author sets us up to ask questions from the off. Why is this young bride so afraid? What can have gone so terribly wrong after only a few hours of marriage?

Let’s go back a bit and frame the story. Leah and Rachel are the daughters of Laban, a wealthy man with many flocks of sheep and goats living in Upper Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). His sister, Rebecca, married Isaac and their son, Jacob, has been sent to find his uncle before our story starts. The first member of the family he meets is his beautiful cousin Rachel, herding the flocks to the well. He falls in love with her immediately, and her father agrees they can marry, once Jacob has completed seven years’ hard work for him. In the meantime, Leah, the older sister, falls in love with Jacob. Laban is a wily character and seeing Jacob’s passionate love for his younger daughter, he decides to trick him and swaps brides. Heavily veiled, Jacob has no idea that he is marrying Leah instead of Rachel. Which brings us back to the terrified girl lying in her bed in the marriage tent the morning after her wedding.

Amanda Bedzrah

Although Leah loves Jacob, she knows that his heart belongs to her sister. She hates the deception, but as Bedzrah explains, in her society, she has no voice.

“To even consider questioning her father’s command would be considered unacceptable in her culture. Marriage was discussed amongst men. It was her father’s right to choose her husband …”

Matters are further complicated by the fact that Leah and Rachel have lost their mother. Her closest female friend is her maid, Zilpah.

The marriage is set up to fail. Leah is condemned to suffer and be compared, always unfavourably, to her radiantly beautiful younger sister. However, there’s much to this story than that. Bedzrah writes about Leah beautifully, showing the reader how compassionate, kind and mature her character is, compared to her sister’s. Even after her new husband has broken all the rules of their culture by running from the marriage tent to find and confront his father-in-law, she remains with her maid and makes the most of her honeymoon, cooking Jacob’s favourite foods and showing him that she loves him.

To modern eyes, this story of a woman given in marriage to a man who doesn’t love her, forced into rivalry with her sister and able only to pray and hope is perhaps a difficult one to read. Independent twenty-first century readers might find themselves thinking, “Dump him, Leah! You’re better than that.” But of course, in around 2000 BC, she couldn’t.

The Message puts it like this:

“Morning came: There was Leah in the marriage bed! Jacob confronted Laban, “What have you done to me? Didn’t I work all this time for the hand of Rachel? Why did you cheat me?” “We don’t do it that way in our country,” said Laban. “We don’t marry off the younger daughter before the older. Enjoy your week of honeymoon, and then we’ll give you the other one also. But it will cost you another seven years of work.”

Jacob Encountering Rachel with her Father's Herds by von Führich

Bedzrah writes Leah’s pain and humiliation with great skill, as her husband leaves the wedding tent after seven days and marries her sister. Right from the start, she is the preferred wife and inflicts many petty unkindnesses on Leah. Their formerly close, loving relationship turns into sadness and isolation on one side and mean-minded triumph on the other.

“Leah” has another difficult sibling relationship running through it. Although he never makes an appearance, Jacob’s twin brother Esau is everywhere in the novel. Jacob and his mother (Laban’s sister) tricked Esau out of his birthright, and his precipitate appearance on his uncle’s doorstep is because he’s running for his life. Having deceived his brother, Jacob in turn is tricked by his uncle. Leah falls in love and has to endure years of being overlooked. Rachel gets her man but struggles to get pregnant.

“Who’s that blue one? Is she bad?”

I was halfway through “Leah” when I sat down one evening to watch “Guardians of the Galaxy” with my sons. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Marvel Universe, but as the mother of three teenagers, I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past nine years sitting in cinemas whispering, “Who’s that blue one? Is she bad?” and then having to have the whole thing explained to me in the car on the way home.

The two “Guardians of the Galaxy” films aren’t as labyrinthine as some of the others and even my middle-aged brain can understand them. One of the narrative threads concerns a deadly sibling rivalry between sisters Gamora (the green one) and Nebula (the blue one). They’re both feisty characters, adopted by Thanos, the bloodthirsty warlord who is intent on wiping out half the universe’s population as he’s concerned that resources are being stretched. He’s an odd mix of good old-fashioned psychopath and eco-warrior.

Anyway. He adopts Gamora and Nebula and pits them against each other from the off. By the time they meet up in the film, Nebula’s only desire is to kill her sister for revenge. She’s got good reason. Rage and jealousy fuel her, while Gamora pleads for reconciliation and forgiveness. You’ll have to watch the films to find out what happens.

Leah doesn’t get the chance to have set-piece battles with Rachel. Her life is one long war of attrition, yearning for her husband to love her yet being relegated to second place. The author paints a picture of diametrically opposed sisters. Here is Rachel on the eve of her wedding to Jacob, recalling her unkindness to Leah:

“She remembered with regret, how once, angry with her sister for not helping her with her own chores, she had revelled in taunting her with her predicament. She reminded Leah that no-one had ever asked for her hand in marriage and laughed bitterly while she said it, delighted that it made Leah so unhappy. She had watched Leah run into their late mother’s empty tent and do what Leah did best, cry and pray.”

Leah doesn’t worship the many pagan gods that many of her family do. She has a strong, personal faith and this runs through the novel like a golden thread. I loved the way that the author built up her character, showing the reader how she behaves as a wife, a mother, a sister and a strong, capable woman. None of the men in the book come off very well. Laban is money-grubbing and wily; Jacob can’t see what’s in front of his face and their sons exhibit a fairly violent streak.

I was gripped by this novel. Intending to dip my toe into the first chapter, I found myself racing through to Chapter Twenty-Three in one sitting! It reminded me a little of another favourite book of mine, “The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant. The heroine of that novel is Dinah, Leah’s only daughter, so it’s an obvious parallel.

So, how does it end? It takes Jacob eighty-two chapters to get there, but finally, in the epilogue, we read these words:

“Jacob didn’t know when or how it happened, but he woke up one day and realised that Leah’s smile made his heart skip a beat. His broken heart had been mended, and he had fallen deeply in love with her. His love for Leah was unexpected and pure; it was tender, and it had grown and matured over the years.”

Rachel is dead, Jacob has twelve sons (the twelve tribes of Israel) by Leah, Rachel and their two handmaidens. Things were different back then. Leah has had to wait a lifetime to win her husband’s love, but at the end, she does. Perhaps the most famous Biblical love triangle ever ends up with the older sister winning out.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the way the author took a familiar story and used the themes of jealousy, sibling rivalry, family dynamics and faith to weave it into a wonderful read. Thousands of years apart, two sisters pitted against each other by their father both make a great story.