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Pre-orders are now available for Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks new book The Secret Chord, about the life of King David, due out in October. 1000 BC. The Second Iron Age. Anointed as the chosen one when just a young shepherd boy, his journey is a tumultuous one and the consequences of his choices will resound for generations. In a life that arcs from obscurity to fame, he is by turns hero and traitor, glamorous young tyrant and beloved king, murderous despot and remorseful, diminished patriarch. His wives love and fear him, his sons will betray him. For her research Brooks traveled to Israel with her youngest son Bizu. Although the landscape of the country had changed over the centuries, Ms. Brooks was able to look out over the actual sites of former battlefields. “There are certain similarities to all battlefields,” she said. “The way they smell, what bodies look like. Unfortunately, I have 10 years of experience with that.”
The Secret Chord takes its title from the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah which begins:
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord. But you don’t really care for music, do you? It goes like this. The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composing Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
With more than two million copies of her novels sold, New York Times bestselling author Geraldine Brooks has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Now, Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.
The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected. We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him-from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.
With stunning originality, acclaimed author Geraldine Brooks offers us a compelling portrait of a morally complex hero from this strange age – part legend, part history. Full of drama and richly drawn detail, The Secret Chord is a vivid story of faith, family, desire and power that brings David magnificently alive.
‘a masterly reworking of what fiction and history have afforded Brooks’ vibrant and questing imagination’ – The Age on March
‘A single shard of historical fact, a well-worn artefact … can send her off to the archives to coax fiction from the seams of history in ways that seem almost miraculous to fans and critics alike.’ – New Zealand Herald
Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in Sydney’s western suburbs. In 1982 she won a scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York. Later she worked for the Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. In 2006 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her novel March. Her novels Caleb’s Crossing and People of the Book were both New York Times bestsellers, and Year of Wonders and People of the Book are international bestsellers, translated into more than 25 languages. She is also the author of the acclaimed non-fiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. In 2011 she presented Australia’s prestigious Boyer Lectures, later published as The Idea of Home.
Brooks lives in Massachusetts with her husband, author Tony Horwitz, and their two sons.
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