Shifting Sands: Life in the Times of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad

The stories of three young people who experience the tumult—in three eras—as new religions are about to be born. Dina is a slave, who must make a choice between the predictable life of an Egyptian slave, or an uncertain one that promises more by following Moses into the desert. Fifteen hundred years later, Rome's oppressive rule has impoverished young Mattan's family. When they come upon a man preaching in Capernaum, their lives change forever as they become followers of Jesus. Around 622 A.D. Fallah, a Bedouin boy, flees from his desert home to break out of the grip of the blood feud that killed his father. Though he becomes a successful poet in the marketplace of Mecca, he and his brother are condemned to live forever as outsiders in a society dominated by a powerful tribe. Muhammad and his Companions offer them a different future—if they are brave enough to grasp it. Drawing on both the historical and the imagined, Shifting Sands brings the past to vivid life. These stories expertly recreate how life might have been for young people living in the time of three of the world's most important figures.