When she awakes, Zara has been raped and tortured. Revka, trying to protect her children and grandchildren, is knocked unconscious. While Yoav goes to pray, more soldiers arrive and assault Zara. Revka’s husband was killed by Roman soldiers, and she took her daughter, Zara, son-in-law Yoav, and grandchildren out into the desert to flee. The story changes over to a woman named Revka, already in Masada. She is haunted by Sia, and suffers pangs of guilt over her behavior. They are taken to the fortress as Yael realizes she is pregnant with Ben Simon’s child. Warriors from the stronghold of Masada arrive, sent by Yael’s brother, Amram. Yosef and Yael attempt to help, but Ben Simon and his family die. Later, Ben Simon and his family become sick with fever, because the desert is a thankless, unforgiving place. While in the desert, she begins an affair with Ben Simon despite the proximity of his family, and despite the fact that Sia had attempted to be kind to her and be friendly. Yael was born with bright red hair which attracts unwanted attention, and as a result she has learned to keep to herself. Her father was an assassin, killing political opponents. Yael’s mother died in childbirth, and she knows her father blames her for this, and has always resented her. Yael reflects on the events in Jerusalem where the Romans moved troops into the city to subdue the rebelling Jews, driving her and her father out of their house along with many of their neighbors, leaving Jerusalem empty and abandoned behind them. The story opens with Yael, a young Jewish woman, telling the story of how she came to be wandering the desert with her father, Yosef, and a man named Ben Simon, his wife Sia, and their family. A work of historical fiction, it is set during the first Roman-Jewish War in the first century CE the famous siege of the fortress of Masada is a major component of the plot. The Dovekeepers is a novel by Alice Hoffman, published in 2011.

The dovekeepers review