This Crowded Night brings the women of the New Testament Gospels to life, capturing the voices of mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives struggling to find their way--and perhaps their faith--in a society where women's voices are too often pushed to the margins. "I'm always looking for ways to read the scriptures--its narratives and people--with clearer, wider eyes and ears. Elrena Evans book does this beautifully, bringing ancient but real people and events to vivid, enfleshed, believable life. Words are made flesh--and God comes near in these stories," says Leslie Leyland Fields, Author, The Spirit of Food; and MFA faculty, Seattle Pacific University. "In these short stories, Elrena Evans joins a long, Christian literary and theological tradition that extends back to the times of the medieval mystery plays and likely before that. To the Bible stories' bare contours, she adds earthly atmosphere, creaturely flesh, and very deep feeling. Her renderings of the familiar tales offer such startling insight and moving revelation that this work of devotion and imagination deserves to find a place beside the more conventional approaches to the Bible," celebrates Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Author, Poetry in America