Women of the Bible have been trapped in dry and dusty literary caskets for centuries. While a few women, such as Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Mary Magdalene, are familiar, many of the women who speak in the Bible have long been ignored. Yet their words are part of God's Word, the Bible, for a reason. Through these women, God spoke, intervened, changed, illustrated, and proclaimed the story of redemption.

In this groundbreaking book named best Bible study of 2015 by Illumination Book Awards, Episcopal priest Lindsay Hardin Freeman identifies every woman who speaks in the Bible, providing their words, context, and historical background. We learn which women speak the most (hint: it's not Mary!) and which books of the Bible have the fewest words from women.

We hear the only conversation in the Bible between a mother and daughter (and it's not pretty), the words of a woman who eats her own child, and the triumphant exclamation of a woman telling the world about the risen Christ.

Questions at the end of each chapter encourage individual or small-group reflection about what we might learn from each of these women and how God is speaking through them to us.

Step into God's sacred circle of mothers, grandmothers, warriors, prophets, prostitutes, and murderers. You won't come out the same.