When I wrote HAVAH, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I had so many questions.

Where was Eden? Where was the garden within it? Is it missing now because of the flood? Is it in another dimension? (Am I out of my mind to even ask such a question?)
What would it look like to walk with God in the cool of the afternoon? (Would God have had a physical body?)
What does a woman think about a talking snake?
Did other animals “talk?”
Did Adam give the animals species or proper names?
How do two innocents discover sex? I mean, without benefit of locker room talk and all.
Had Adam been tempted before Eve came along?
So where was Adam, after all, when Eve took that fateful bite?
Did they know something had changed immediately after eating it? Did they immediately feel themselves begin to die?
What did that fruit taste like?
Did they know what had happened before their coming into the world?
Did Eve have any vicarious memory of her life before her creation?
How long did they live there before the fateful fruit-eating day?
How did it happen, being chased from the garden?
Where did they go? Did they ever stand at the gate and look back and try to return?
Where did they learn how to make sacrifices?
How did they learn basic skills like storing plants, fire-making, tool-making?

And more questions that only a sick mind like mine can wonder:
Was there truly no death anywhere, or only no spiritual death? If there was no physical death, how did bugs not get stepped on and die? How did birds not eat worms?
The animals that were made into the skins for Adam and Eve to wear–did Adam and Eve know them? By name? Were they friends?

And more, practical questions that arose the farther I got:
After their expulsion, did they eat meat?
Did it rain?
What did they have for guidelines for living in the absence of law, role-models, social mores?
Why exactly did God not favor Cain’s sacrifice?
Did Cain know he was killing Abel?
How old was Abel when he died? Was he married? How old was Cain?
What did God’s voice sound like to Cain?
What was Cain’s mark?

Where was Nod?
How did Cain build a city, being a wandering nomad?
One I’m asked often: Where did Cain’s wife come from?
How many children did Adam and Eve have?
Did Eve outlive Adam?

And more yet:
Did Eve have days, moments, or years of despair that they would ever be restored?
Were Adam and Eve faithful to one another?
Were they equals? When did the roots of subjugation begin?
Were their children godly? Were they, by our standards, pagan?
What was the population of the earth at the time of Adam’s death?
Did Eve ever reconcile who the serpent was?
Did they ever try to return to the garden?
Did they ever see Cain again?
What secrets remained to them alone, that they might not have passed on?

I think I single-handedly drove at least one pastor, two scholars and one theologian all crazy. And I wondered again if I were unhinged to wonder the things that I do.

In the end, I can’t claim that I know the answers. I chose the most plausible conclusions based on my research or those solutions that worked best for the story. Each of these items is answered, to the best of my ability for now, within the pages of HAVAH.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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