Being the great writer he is, Mr. Fast make the friends of Moses' youth - his mother, a priest, a builder, an old soldier, a doctor, and a great Egyptian general - real people, each with his or her own strengths, weaknesses and ambitions. These are people who themselves have been shaped by the struggle to survive in the imperial court of Ramses - and often by unfulfilled hopes which almost died upon the death of a previous Egyptian Pharaoh. That Pharaoh was the historical heretic Akh-en-ton, who had tried to overthrow the old polytheistic Egyptian religion that focused on death and afterlife, and replace it with a simpler religion worshiping one God who honored life and knowledge. Many of his friends - who are not all without selfishness - see Moses both as a possible successor to Ramses and a restorer of the wise rule of Akh-en-ton.

And again, because this a Howard Fast novel, the adversaries the young Moses must deal with are themselves complex people, each compelled to act out their own mixture of ambitions, strengths, fears and weaknesses. At the head of the list is the great Ramses himself, who can order the death of anyone and has wives and children without number, but both fears Moses and wants his friendship. A man who Moses recognizes as "the loneliest man in Egypt."

In the background is a vivid evocation of ancient Egyptian life, from the hushed throne room of Ramses, to the harsh and beautiful desert facing an Egyptian army marching along the upper Nile on a expedition to the land of Kush, to the pitiful homes of the enslaved Bedouins, the Children of Israel, living in the Land of Goshen, in the Nile delta.

I strongly recommend this novel to anyone. Certainly this is not the way Moses grew up, but some similar remarkable happenings must have made the man we are told about in the Bible.