Carole Towriss on ‘Ordinary Women of the Bible’

My name is Carole Towriss, and I write Biblical fiction. The idea of taking a character that’s only been mentioned a few times, whose story is really not in Scripture, I find irresistible. Most Biblical writers write about the big characters—David, Moses, Esther—but I like to know what happened to all the other people in that story, the people in the background, the people on the sidelines.

Did Caleb’s daughter want to be married to the man that Caleb picked for her, when he said, “I promise my daughter as a prize to the man who conquers Debir”? The slave girl in Philippi that Paul freed from the demon of prophesy, did she become a believer after that? I want know all of these things, so I create a story that fits with the Scripture, and that gives me some of those answers.

When I choose a story to write, I first read that story in the Bible many times, different versions. I try to see if this character is maybe mentioned in other places in the Bible. Jochebed, for example, is mentioned in the Hebrews Hall of Faith, as a woman of great faith.

And then I go to commentaries, and I read as many commentaries as I can find to see what take they have on this story. And then I pick one or synthesize one that I want to go with.

Then I start researching the time, the place, the customs. I buy books, I read out-of-print books online, anything that I can get to tell me about the foods they ate, the clothes they wore, the weather that was there. Because the more details you can get and the more accurate those details are, the more the story will come alive.

The most important thing to me is that it be true to the Scriptures. You can always add, because it is fiction, but you can never contradict anything that the Bible has to say.

In the back of each of these books is a short non-fiction section that explains several of the things that are in the book. It just puts some more historical context into the book.

I think it’s probably something that all of us, as Biblical fiction authors, would love to have to explain all of the things that we researched and we know, but most people don’t. So I think that readers will really enjoy those extra tidbits of information.