Far Memory Books

The seventh of Joan Grant's "Far Memory" novels, So Moses Was Born, is set in Egypt, in the time just before the birth of Moses. The story is a familiar one: found in the bulrushes, Moses's upbringing in the court of Egypt gave him the influence and power to set the Israelites free. Joan Grant enlarges the picture by depicting the events that led up to the discovery of the baby Moses, convincingly portraying the man she believed was his father, Ramoses II, through the words of his reclusive half-brother Nebunefer. Called back from his chosen exile in the idyllic land of the Living Waters, Nebunefer is asked by the Pharoah to predict which of the children born to the royal concubines will be worthy to succeed him, but as we know there will be another destiny for the baby Moses, child of a Hebrew mother and a royal father.

The second of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, Life as Carola gives a fascinating glimpse into life in Italy just before the height of the Renaissance. As a child growing up in Edwardian England, Joan Grant became aware of an astonishing ability to remember previous lifetimes. As an author, she professed her seven novels to be based on her personal recollections of other incarnations, male and female. Carola was the illegitimate daughter of an Italian nobleman, the Lord of the Griffin, in sixteenth-century Italy. Cast out at an early age, she joined a band of strolling players. In her short lifetime, Carola gathers harsh experiences of poverty, violence, and bigotry, softened by the friendships she makes on the road: with Petruchio, both jester and sage; with Bernard, the gentle strongman, and Lucia, the harlot who loves him; and with healer Sofia, whose fate warns Carola to keep quiet about her dreams of the Shining One who guides and comforts her.