The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman's haunting re-imagining of this historical event, already on bestseller lists, distinctions between fact and fable fall away as the reader is plunged into a world as grounded in the physical detail of reality as it is charged with the superhuman magic of myth. More recently, the accepted truth of what happened on that mountain has been challenged by some as a myth that glorifies extremism and refusal to compromise. The destruction of Masada and the defiance of its defenders was, for years, a unifying symbol for the contemporary state of Israel. Only two women and five children survived. When it became obvious that Masada's defeat was imminent, the inhabitants chose mass suicide rather than being enslaved or murdered. There they lived for several years until the Romans laid siege to the mountain. In 70 AD, following the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans, a community of 900 Jewish rebels formed a last stronghold at Masada, a mountain fortress in the Judean desert where Herod had built a palace a century earlier.
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