AMONG THE THIRTY

Every legend has a list of names no one reads.

Eliam is nineteen, and the son of Ahithophel, the most trusted counselor in Judah. He has been raised to read ledgers, to weigh a lie in the pauses of a man's speech, and to keep his head down while kings come and go. Every dawn he steals one hour to train with the bronze sword of an uncle who never came home from the Valley of Elah.

When soldiers march toward his father's olive terraces, Eliam makes the first choice that is truly his own. He leaves Gilo with a bundle his mother packed four times and goes looking for the outlaw David, who has gathered four hundred desperate men in the cave of Adullam.

There he meets a Philistine deserter who cannot stop talking, a hard-eyed commander who counts every cost, a shepherd's daughter with a sling at her belt, and a gold-eyed young leader who sees far too much. As Saul hunts them across the wilderness, Eliam must learn what no ledger can teach: how to stand in a line, how to lose, and how to hold.

From the burning of Ziklag to the long road to Hebron and the rising walls of Jerusalem, this is the story of the years the Bible passes over in a few lines. Among the thirty names in the roll of David's mighty men stands Eliam son of Ahithophel. This novel imagines who he was, what it cost him, and the promise he made to a father who saw too far.

For readers of biblical fiction and ancient world historical fiction, and for anyone who loves character-driven epics about loyalty, found family, and the price of courage.