Why I Wrote The Flower of Canaan
When people ask about my first novel, The Flower of Canaan, I tell them it takes place centuries before Jesus in the ancient land of Canaan. I see the questions in their eyes. Why so long ago? And where’s Canaan?
Well, as often happens, there’s a story behind the story. ….
Mine begins not in the 13th century BCE but in the 1940s, with my mother Doris. Born a natural beauty in rural Idaho in 1921, Doris grew with a lively and playful spirit, in vivid contrast to the scrub life of her immigrant parents struggling to get by, especially when the Depression came. Her spirit inevitably conflicted with the stern, repressive fundamentalist religion of her family. When her father forced her to drop out of high school to work, she met a handsome, charismatic lad and fell for promises he would never deliver. When Doris wouldn’t let him have the pleasure he sought, he forced himself on her. She became pregnant. And when the pastor told her that it’s the woman’s responsibility not to tempt a man, she felt forced to marry Willis.
I’ve often thought about her loneliness and despair soon after Willis’s initial charms gave way to beatings, when the rapes continued after the birth of her first child Merry, when she was forced become the breadwinner, when Willis drank every night, and when she became pregnant again with me. In her religion, abortion was an unthinkable sin, and in her society, illegal. Shortly after I was born, little Merry, her beloved daughter, a year or so older than I, died from pneumonia. How isolated Doris must have felt, dealing with grief, family judgment, and undermined (in fact, condemned) by religious beliefs asserting that women, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, are responsible for the evils and trials besetting mankind!
Doris
Finally, Doris had enough. (I am so deeply proud of her.) She defied her pastor and family and sued Willis for divorce — another “sin” in the eyes of her religion.
When I was 21, still unaware of the full story of what he had done to my mother, I met Willis. It took me only a few moments to know that Mom would always be my hero. Her courage to act saved me from being raised by a deceitful, dreadful, unaccountable man. She saved herself as well.
My first thought was to tell her story. But I’ve long been troubled by how some religions promote ancient, hateful beliefs — beliefs that shame and weaken rather than give hope, inspiration, and strength.
For thousands of years, women have suffered from these kinds of beliefs! Yet during that time, we’ve shed a lot of beliefs that no longer serve us well. Almost no one believes that the sun revolves around the Earth anymore.
Yet the belief that a woman is responsible for what a man does to her endures. (I read another example of this on May 10, 2024, in the New York Times.) While we’ve largely outlawed buying and selling women, somewhere today, a young woman is being told, “Honey, the fact that you’re pregnant now is solely your responsibility, girl.” My mother’s young struggle in the 1940s is a story of women of every age.
Some wonderful qualities of life come down to us from the Levant. But we must choose to throw off beliefs that abuse and defile, lead to hate and violence, and degrade us. Just as we overcame the belief that the sun revolves around the Earth, we must overcome the belief that women revolve around men.
Canaan is a land mentioned several times in the Old Testament. The three great religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all sprang from Canaan, in an area still hotly contested and troubled. While ancient stories from this place can inspire us in positive ways, they challenge us to do even better than they could in the Late Bronze Age.
Now is the time when everyone must examine what they’ve been told to believe and apply critical thinking. We need it now more than ever.
— Tim Flood, May 31, 2025
Map by Arnon Moscona, 2024