Mara: Daughter of the Nile

I met this classic from 1953 thanks to family friend Holly Altmeyer who fell in love with it in Elementary School. Now a high school student, Holly lent me the 1953 edition which she obtained as a library discard. Her praises encouraged me to read the book which I was delighted to find well plotted, engaging and heart warming. Checking it out for this blog entry I discovered it is still in print in a new edition and sports 166 customer reviews on Amazon.com. It is good to know some classics never die but are loved over and over again each generation. Also found a scan of the 1953 title page and a sample of fan art on PhotoBucket.

The Wikipedia entry for Mara: Daughter of the Nile includes a section describing historical eras to do with dynastic details of the Egyption kings. I was more interested in the tone of the work which portrayed slavery without anything more than an hint of the potential for sexual abuse that would doubtless have featured in a modern re-telling of the same story. I found it refreshing.

Definitely a Cinderella story, in which Mara earns the love of the marvelous Lord Sheftu, secret leader of the opposition to a despotic queen, it is told with charm and even some insightful cultural awareness. Shetfu's terror at tomb robbing intelligently avoids being trivialized by the superimposition of modern attitudes while retaining the sympathy of the modern reader for what could easily be dismissed as superstition.