James A. Michener · 1965 · overland

James Michener's 1965 novel. An archaeological dig at a tell in Galilee cuts down through fifteen levels, and each object recovered opens a chapter set in its own period - from a flint sickle before farming, through the Israelites, the Romans, the Crusaders and the Ottomans, to 1948. The site itself is the only continuous character.

1. 1
   Acre

   The dig is run out of the coastal city, itself layered with Phoenician, Crusader and Ottoman walls - and the archaeologists are Israeli, American, Arab and Irish, arguing about the past inside a live argument about the present.

2. 2
   Makor

   The tell rises above a spring that has drawn people for twelve thousand years, and the shaft goes down through fifteen occupations - each object at each level giving Michener a chapter and a way into the period.

3. 3
   Safed

   In the hills above Galilee, Safed carries the medieval chapters - the Kabbalists, the early Hebrew printing press, and the long continuous presence in the land that the modern argument is partly about.

4. 4
   Jerusalem

   Jerusalem is where every strand converges, from the Israelite monarchy through the Crusader kingdom to 1948 - and the novel closes with the trench backfilled and the questions it opened entirely unresolved.