An Excerpt from The Fisherman’s Wife

Available for purchase at: Buoy Up Press

(Note: This work of fiction set in the first century Palestine portrays the life of Simon Peter’s wife, as I see it may have happened.)

Time blurred one day into the next. Johanna mechanically went through her daily chores. Her pregnancy kept her exhausted all the time. Finally, her time arrived and she went into labor. Leah and the midwife helped her. It lasted for hours. Johanna had to be supported on the birthing bricks. She couldn’t hold herself up anymore. With one last push, the baby boy slid into the midwife’s hands. Johanna collapsed.

Leah and Esther exchanged looks with the midwife. She shook her head and covered the little boy with a cloth. Johanna, barely coherent whispered, “Why do I not hear my baby cry?”

Leah enfolded her daughter in her arms. Johanna keened into her mother’s shoulder. She had failed again.

When Simon came to inquire of his wife and child, Esther and Caleb took him to the shoreline now empty of fishermen and boats. Simon sat down and buried his head in his hands. Then, after awhile, he rose, composed and aloof.

Simon and Johanna’s home seemed permanently silent. No children played in the court yard or splashed in the water’s edge when the boats came in from fishing. The months passed and Johanna lost hope of bearing a live child. Finally, Simon stopped coming to her at all. …

Johanna fell on her face and prayed for death or a child. “Oh God, like our mother Rachael, fill my womb with a child that I may redeem myself before my husband and my people.”