The most useful part of this book, which is written by a columnist living in Jerusalem, is the extent to which it describes the distortion of facts by the media. It does not merely allege such distortion, but shows how it occurs, and why, in ways that have been substantiated in real life. You can actually see it for yourself, when you compare the news from the original sources to what you see edited in and out. We are on the receiving end of this manipulation every day. Or, as a small example, open up the newspaper and read an article critical of a public figure, and watch the way in which the facial expression of the public figure is smiling when it should be somber, for example. And then realize that the paper has a stack of file photos, and picked just that one. Not the one where the subject of the article has the facial expression he wore during the interview, or during the events. So they might be talking about starving children and use a file photo of the politician that shows him smiling or laughing. That picture might be six months old.

I will not get into the plot of The Covenant, which other reviewers have already covered, except to say that it involves wishful thinking. Terrorists have been abducting Israelis for years, and no one ever finds them again. The barbarity of terrorist attacks has been swallowed up by false "tit-for-tat" coverage that attempts to justify anything. The United States saw a fragment of this after 9/11, when journalists would chatter with righteous indignation at the suggestion that the perpetrators were "evil," and would go into the ways in which our foreign policy was to blame (so, in order to make our foreign policy more appetizing, it should be sanctified by people who believe in using babies as human shields, and in intentionally killing civilians? Isn't this like taking Dennis "BTK Killer" Rader and putting him on the state legislature?). This is a digression with a point: There are no secret societies with hidden, far-reaching influence working to save the innocents in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria. That is what makes Israelis so brave. The terrorists have Reuters and AP as their own PR companies, and world opinion turns against them because of it.

On the other hand, writing the story without those four brave Holocaust survivors perhaps would have made the truth too unbearable. Easier to blame the victims as, in fact, some so-called intellectuals have tried to blame the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre (with lies such as that they didn't fight back because they "forgot the lesson of Flight 93;" they bullied Cho; that they lacked discipline and courage...). There really is an impulse to blame the victim in order to displace our own sense of helplessness. So perhaps having this book have so much hope is the only way for people to accept the bitter truths within it.

Anyone who consumes news from any source should read this. And then go to The Second Draft and other sites for proof.

THE COVENANT is, without a doubt, the best book I have read in a long, long time! The mystery aspect of it, mentioned often in other reviews, takes a very distant back seat to the amazing commentary on religion and terrorism about which Ragen writes so knowingly and empathetically. This definitely is a book I would recommend to anyone; there is a message for all of us in this story!

The Covenant is a novel full of incendiary material. In the post 9/11 world, we have all had to take sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the Arab/Israeli conflict which is at the heart of this novel.

No matter which side you are on, living through the lives of the characters in The Covenant can open your eyes. Ragen doesn't try to convince, doesn't argue points, doesn't indulge in diatribes or polemics. She simply shows you what the entire situation looks like from several different points of view.

When I started to learn fiction writing in my early teens, I learned that a writer sets an imaginary camera on the main character's shoulder and lets the reader view the entire situation through that camera lens.

The reader knows only what the character knows, and thus can enter into that character's emotional life through the character's point of view.

The Covenant uses many points of view which dilutes and disturbs the emotional bonding with the characters, but also promotes objectivity about the total situation. This is an example of excellent craftsmanship at its shining best.

Ragen does character sketch essays for each of the main characters so marvelous that they sneak up on you and suddenly you're wrung out with overwhelming emotion.

The novel amasses an astounding breadth and depth of facts that shower down upon you as you read. All those facts are juxtaposed and arranged with the spare clarity of a Japanese Brush Painting.

You don't have to judge whether the facts are true or not. You are riding on the shoulder of a character for whom that fact is true, and you can learn something about what it feels like for that fact to be true.

Only a novel can deliver an emotional reality with such clarity.

I recommend this book for beginning writers to study in depth.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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Am 100% pleased with the delivery of my book and have so thoroughly enjoyed reading it from cover to cover...sure is a heck of a lot easier ordering from Amazon.com than running down to Barnes and Noble or Borders to order a book. Many thanks for a job well done.

Worth reading if you are recovering from major surgery and on pain meds. I read it in these circumstances and doubt I could recommend it otherwise.

While I enjoy Ms. Ragen's other novels, The Covenant is special.
Sadly, its clarity, situations, and emotions come at a high price-- Ms. Ragen lives with the daily reality of 'Palestinian' terrorism, and was present at the bombing of a seder being held in a hotel.
When she writes people who have been the targets of violence simply because they are Jews, she is writing from *experience.*

The sad reality is, the Arabs in the territories are distracted by the corrupt leaders into loving death instead of building a nation, healthy communities, an economy, etc.

There is nothing in this book that has not actually happened. Remember that.