By Elisabeth Mehl Greene
Fernwood Press: 2024.
Paperback, 140 pages
Reviewed by Kendra Weddle
Biblical aptitude is woefully insufficient today. I routinely witnessed this during my many years of teaching first year university students, where even well-known figures like Moses or Deborah or Peter were beyond the reach of familiarity. Worse than not-knowing, however, is the lack of engagement and wrestling with a text that deserves full-blown questioning and curiosity. The leather-bound, gold-edged, red-lettered pages have surely done their destructive work, producing superficial traversing at best.
Every once in a while, however, there is a tool that creates the possibility of seeing the good book differently, of encouraging readers to read with new eyes. Tobit Detours is one such book. It is no surprise, given Elisabeth Mehl Greene’s first book, Lady Midrash. In it she invited readers to dust off their imaginations and explore biblical women who usually are overlooked. Her second book moves from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament to the Book of Tobit, a biblical novella included in the canon for Catholic and Orthodox churches, and part of the apocrypha for Protestant churches.
Author Elisabeth Mehl Greene is an accomplished writer and composer whose work in addition to these two books can be found in CIRQUE, Lucky Jefferson, NonBinary Review, Bourgeon, VoiceCatcher, Mizna, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and in the anthologies Erase the Patriarchy and District Lines IV. She is also the founding editor of Untold Volumes: Feminist Theology Poetry.
Mehl Greene brings to Tobit her sharp eye and wit, her ability to find stones heretofore unturned, to journey into foreign lands and time, and to turn a phrase that lingers with wise possibility. With a keen ability to examine the unfamiliar, she includes requisite resources for the imaginary journey: a synopsis of Tobit, a cast of characters, a four-part sequence of events, and endnotes (evidence of the extensive research required to interrogate the text). As a nascent reader of Tobit, these tools were invaluable. I flipped back and forth: from text to cast to endnotes, finding them especially useful. Mehl Greene’s vast knowledge of art and poetry, ancient and modern storytelling, as well as instinct for a deeper reality, is evident throughout and begs the reader to stop and pay attention.
In her introduction, Mehl Greene says that she intends this work to “interrogate female characters surrounding Tobit and his son Tobias…” and to extend such investigations in outward circles to other overlooked characters as well. She accomplishes this expertly. For example, in Part I where we learn of the clash of circumstances, Sarah, the distant cousin of Tobit, who has been plagued by the demon Asmodeus who has murdered her “consecutive grooms on their wedding nights,” and who is overhearing the complaints of her maidservants responds:
put two
and two together
but you try telling Anonymous
spirit to GTFO
(no doubt
a clamorous encounter)
bearing my end of the bargain:
a responsibility to protect
the band of brothers
and their book of heroes
Or, consider Sarah again, only this time, in Part III, after she and Tobias have married, honeymooned, and now are returning to his home. Tobias has decided to go ahead of the caravan, leaving Sarah to complete the journey in his absence.
Yes, thank you for leaving me
at the riverbank, blushing deserted bride
while you make a break for it
Of course I can lead the entourage
myself, navigate effortlessly in a locality
none of us has seen, interpret
your slapdash cartography
Not all of Mehl Greene’s interrogation centers on women. In Part IV, for example, she gives voice to how Raguel, Sarah’s father, must feel when his daughter, by virtue of living with her husband’s family as tradition required, no longer is in geographical proximity. He asks:
No counsel for our daughter’s daily steps
parenting her parenting even then
scant warm tiny palms led in ours
while we ascend mist over the hillside
to share lambswool handful nimbus clouds
or first sugar snowflakes of winter
Is this justice?
all those memories
belong to Anna and Tobit
I have a hunch that should this book ever find its way onto a stage—its humor and perspective popping up from an old story told in a new way—the elevated experience would be electric. Religious scholars suggest that the book of Tobit offers guidance to those living in exile, showing them that familial bonds preserve community. In our age, where marketing and misappropriation of the Bible are rampant, we need the work of Mehl Greene and other serious guides to urge readers from tiptoeing across an ancient landscape to setting up tents and staying a while. At least long enough to learn there is a wise world beneath the dusty path.
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© 2025 by Christian Feminism Today and Kendra Weddle.
