Six Sentence Sunday

Time again for another Six Sentence Sunday, a blogging experience where participants post six sentences from something they’re working on or something they’ve published. You can visit their site to check out the other participants or to join in on the fun.

This week’s sentences come from my work-in-progress, Judah and Tamar, a dramatic retelling of the Biblical story. This will become my next blog series, starting January 2013, after Full of Grace is completed, so keep an eye out for that. Tamar, a young woman who’s already buried one husband, is bound by tradition to marry his brother, who will become a kinsman-redeemer to ensure her first husband is given an heir. But when the brother also dies, her father-in-law, Judah, is forced to reconsider her place in the family.

Let me know what you think; I appreciate your comments.

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Judah steals a glance at Tamar, who sits quietly at the table where Onan’s body had been. She hasn’t moved since they arrived and if it wasn’t for the batting of her eyelids, he would have thought her dead.

She had changed, he considers; where she was once young, vibrant, carrying with her a certain spark that seemed to glow brighter when she talked about or looked at Er, now she was quiet, sullen, older than her twenty-odd years. Judah knows why, everybody does: Er had neglected her for other women, while Onan had mistreated her, the evidence of which was visible on her face.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that she was twice a widow in the same family. Maybe she wasn’t a witch, but she was certainly cursed; and if he gave her his youngest son, Shelah, the boy would only end up dead just like his brothers, leaving him to fulfill the part of the kinsman-redeemer, something he was NOT going to do.