The Tree of Providence · Book 1
The Tree of Providence
The Babylon Exile
Raymond Meyes
Civilizational In preparation
A young nobleman. An empire that erases the vanquished. A hundred days of marching to understand what he will never let go. From a burning Jerusalem to the courts of Babylon, Daniel ben-Hilkiah learns that the true ordeal is not exile.
About the book
On a night in 586 BCE, Jerusalem vanishes in flames. Daniel ben-Hilkiah is eighteen. Noble, literate, educated to serve his people — and now a captive. A hundred days of marching await him, across the Mesopotamian desert, with ten thousand other exiles for whom he becomes, against his will, a guardian. A hundred days to cross the furnace, bury the dead, see through betrayals — and understand that the true ordeal is not the march. It is what awaits him in Babylon. For the most powerful empire of the known world offers him what no captive is supposed to deserve: an education, a title, a future. In exchange, he must learn a new language, bear a new name, serve the king who destroyed his city. The real question is not whether he will succeed. It is what will remain of him if he succeeds too well.
Themes
The first volume of a saga that revisits the biblical narrative of the Book of Daniel as a meditation on the education received from one's adversaries. Far from the entertaining historical novel, The Tree of Providence questions what a conquered people chooses to transmit through its rare survivors admitted to the victor's table, and the price one pays so that a memory may not fade into the comfort of a new identity.