WESTWARD OY!

When Jews seeking a homeland dreamed of Texas.

- KATHRYN SCHULZ

Ezekiel was an exile. Born in the kingdom of Judah, he survived the siege of Jerusalem, in 597 B.C.E., but afterward was banished with his fellow-Jews to Babylon. While there, he had an arresting vision: He saw himself in a valley filled with human remains, as if a terrible battle had taken place there long ago and the vanquished still lay where they were slain. Then God spoke to him, and the bones reconfigured into skeletons, the skeletons filled out with flesh, and the wind began to blow toward them from all directions. All at once, the Book of Ezekiel records, “the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

To restore the dead to life: that is the prerogative of gods, but also the purview of historians. The past, too, is a valley of dry bones, its inhabitants permanently silent, its artifacts scattered and bleached to bareness. Those who manage to make it vivid again are praised in the language of miracles: they “bring history to life,” they “resurrect” a bygone era. On the page, such revivification generally takes familiar forms—meticulously researched nonfiction, doorstopper biographies, the occasional stellar work of historical fiction.