Mara, Daughter of the Nile is a thrilling summer read.

T here are many memorable curriculum highlights from my homeschool days, such as History of the Horse (which I’ll write about later this year), Think It Through tiles from Discovery Toys, and the year my youngest siblings did Along the Alphabet Path. Anything involving history and literature was particularly popular with me, and many of my memories involve those subjects. Our homeschool curriculum was organized so that history was taught in cycles. If you followed the pattern all the way through high school, you’d hit different eras multiple times, going a bit deeper with each iteration. One time period we did only once was ancient Egypt, but some moments from that year stand out clearly in my memory.

Maybe you’ve built a model of the Nile River in an old kiddie pool, complete with sand and foliage and water. But have you also dressed up as an Egyptian queen, with a bejeweled collar you painted yourself and a curly wig you crafted from construction paper? It was great fun, and amid these crafts, we learned about Egyptian culture, burial customs, climate, and religion. We also had a book of Egyptian folktales, which I devoured. While it was not as engaging — for me at least — as Greek and Roman myths and legends, there was still a healthy level of wonder and mysteriousness to keep me interested.

Later, when I was in high school, ancient Egypt again caught my attention, but this time it was through the thrilling tale spun by author Eloise Jarvis McGraw in her captivating book Mara, Daughter of the Nile.

This book, a novel full of historical detail, romance, and intrigue, was perfectly suited to capture my imagination. I often reread this tale during the summer, slipping from my hot, green home into the scorching, sandy one of Mara without a second thought, losing myself for hours in her world.

And what is Mara’s world? It is a culture of intense passions and divides, of warring siblings struggling over a throne, of a weary population taxed beyond their limits, of a people at once both shrewd and credulous. Mara herself is an orphan and a slave. She can’t remember her home or parents, and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t owned by someone. Some masters were kind, like the one who taught her to read and write. Others, like the one we meet at the book’s beginning, beat her and starve her. Our heroine’s spirit is unbroken, however, and she uses her quick wit and lively tongue to get herself in and out of tight situations. These traits, along with her uncommon blue eyes and ability to speak both Egyptian and Babylonian, lead her into a complicated conspiracy when she becomes a key spy for both sides of a plot around the Egyptian throne.

McGraw, born in Texas in 1915, lived in many states during her life but is claimed quite strongly by Oregon. She won three Newbery Honor Awards — though not, alas, for Mara — and other accolades. Her love of stories and storytelling seems to have come from her father, but she set aside her writing ambitions for some time after discovering a talent for art. A woman of varied interests, McGraw circled back to writing, and after producing short stories for several magazines, published her first book, Sawdust in His Shoes, in 1950. From then until the mid-1990s, McGraw would continue to publish, turning out stories in various genres.

McGraw’s admirable attention to detail shines through in Mara, from her description of the daily lives of both slaves and masters — in their homes, shops, and palaces — to the weather, flora, and fauna of this fabled African country. Egyptian expressions are used, and the mythology of their gods is entwined throughout. The author does, in certain instances, take some liberties with history. Queen Hatshepsut is treated as the villain in this tale, and stands accused of crushing the Egyptian people with her constant need for more monuments to her greatness and more money to pay for those symbols. She is holding her half-brother Thutmose (in real life, Thutmose III was her stepson) in a gilded cage and trying to procure his death or disappearance.

Fighting against her is the mysterious Lord Sheftu, a shape-shifter who professes his allegiance to the queen but is actually fiercely loyal to Thutmose — to the point of near-death. Caught between the queen’s henchmen and Sheftu, Mara initially tries to play both sides for her own benefit, planning to help whichever faction will give her what she ardently desires: freedom. But as events play out, Mara realizes there is much more at stake than her own freedom.

While Egyptology may not quite be my cup of tea, romance certainly is. McGraw builds wonderful characters in this book, and the battle of emotions and wills between Mara and Sheftu is one of the main reasons I return to it time after time.

So whether you take delight in pharaohs and Egyptian lore, need a thrilling summer read, or simply need a decently written (and not raunchy) romance, this might be the book for you.