Booklist Reviews Book of Esther (with a star!)

“In her third novel, brainy and ebulliently eloquent Barton (Brookland, 2006) tells the story of a Jewish Joan of Arc on the forbidding steppes between the Black and Caspian Seas…Barton’s audacious tale of an otherworldly uprising against the Nazis is a wild pageant of tumult and valor, magic and inventiveness, which, for all its humor, sensuality, steampunk brio, and full-tilt military action, is profoundly inquisitive….With intimations of Cynthia Ozick and Michael Chabon, Barton is spellbinding and provocative in this refulgent, topsy-turvy, questing fantasy, a mettlesome response to anti-Semitism and the forever-haunting Holocaust.” – Starred Booklist review

Please read Donna Seaman’s full wonderful review here. Writers are always happy when their books are positively received; but I really love it when a reader connects with a book on as many levels as Seaman does here.