(reviewed by Monette Moradi)
Esther Goldenberg, The Song of the Bluebird: The Desert Songs Trilogy, Book 3, 100 Block by Row House Publishing, March 2026, 416 pgs.
In the conclusion of The Desert Songs Trilogy, Esther Goldenberg weaves together motifs from her previous books to create The Song of the Bluebird, centred on Serah Ben Asher. This female figure in the Torah told Yaakov that Yosef was alive, lived through the enslavement in Mitzraim long enough to be counted at Har Sinai, and entered Eretz Yisrael. To accommodate this span, Goldenberg diverges slightly from religious and mythological fiction into fantasy, granting her protagonist an eternal life. Through Serah’s eyes, we witness not only her personal story but also the years of Israelite bondage in Egypt and the journey into the Holy Land, all filtered through the author’s strongest feminist interpretation of the Torah yet.
On the subject of the Exodus, Goldenberg ensures with considerable skill that Jewish suffering does not dominate the narrative. Instead, she foregrounds themes that remain painfully relevant: division among the Jewish people over what is best for their survival, the limits of integration in a land that is not their own, and anger at Hashem after tragedy. These resonate not only in a post-October 7th world but also with the continuous challenges of Jewish existence across millennia. Yet we remain as a people. The prologue serves as a powerful reminder of this endurance, opening with Serah in the middle of a rabbinic lesson as the Romans lay siege to Jerusalem during the era of the Second Beit HaMikdash.
Readers will need familiarity with the previous two books in the trilogy to understand certain references and character motivations, but this continuity serves an important purpose. Throughout the series, a blessing song for the new month recurs to great emotional effect. While multiple songs carry weight in this book, noticing that during their bondage in Egypt the women continued to mark the new month together instilled in me a sense of warmth and familiarity. It felt as though the author were speaking directly to me, reassuring her female Jewish readers that, while situations may be bleak, it is the women of the Jewish people who have taken their role as homemakers and used it to sustain Jewish traditions for the next generation, not simply to serve the men in their families.
Jewish women had to watch their sisters and mothers endure unthinkable fates on October 7th. We have faced dismissal of our pain and outright lies about what happened. With this series, Goldenberg offers a comforting vision of where women have come from, what they endured, and how they grew stronger.