In Joshua and the Chosen People, Ben Garrido takes a legendary chapter of biblical history and reshapes it into a historical fiction novel filled with tension, moral struggle, and deeply personal stakes. The book explores what happens when Joshua inherits leadership of the Israelites and steps into a destiny that feels both sacred and terrifying. The mission placed before him is clear: guide his people into a homeland of their own. Yet the land is already occupied, fortified, and defended by nations who have no intention of stepping aside.
This is where the novel immediately sets itself apart. Rather than treating the conquest of Canaan as a straightforward tale of victory, Garrido frames it as a story of burden. Joshua does not simply carry a sword. He carries the pressure of divine expectation, the fear of his followers, and the haunting knowledge that his success will come at someone else’s expense.
Jericho rises ahead as the first great obstacle, gleaming with strength and wealth. Beyond it lies the larger world of Canaan, a region portrayed as both alluring and dangerous. The Israelites view it as corrupted by pagan worship and impure bloodlines. Joshua, however, is forced to confront a painful reality: the people living behind those walls are still people.
Joshua: A Soft-Hearted Leader in a Brutal Role
Many stories about Joshua emphasize bravery and triumph. Ben chooses a more complicated path. His Joshua is a leader with a tender conscience, a man who wants to be righteous even while being pushed toward destruction. That inner conflict becomes one of the novel’s most gripping elements.
Joshua’s role demands decisiveness. His people look to him for certainty. They want a commander who will silence their doubts. Yet Joshua is not made of stone. He feels hesitation, grief, and the weight of responsibility in ways that make him remarkably relatable.
The Israelites themselves are portrayed as human and imperfect. They have survived hardship and wandering, but survival has not erased fear. They are still a community shaped by uncertainty. They want the security of a homeland, yet the process of claiming it forces them to become something unfamiliar: conquerors.
This transformation creates a powerful emotional tension throughout the story. Joshua must hold his people together while struggling with his own questions. How far can obedience go before it becomes cruelty? Can virtue survive when violence is considered a divine command? The book does not hand readers comforting answers. It pushes them to sit with the discomfort.
What makes Joshua especially compelling is that his softness is not weakness. It is awareness. He sees what others avoid. He understands the human cost behind the language of destiny. That makes every decision heavier, every victory more complicated, and every step toward the Promised Land feel like a test of the soul.
The Conquest Seen Through a Human Lens
One of the boldest choices in Joshua and the Chosen People is the way Ben portrays the people of Canaan. They are not treated as faceless villains created only to be defeated. Instead, Garrido presents them as living communities with pride, traditions, families, and a right to fear the invading Israelites.
This approach gives the novel its emotional depth. Readers are not simply watching an army advance. They are watching lives collide. Jericho becomes more than a symbol of resistance. It becomes a home filled with people who are just as real as Joshua’s followers.
By building empathy on both sides, the novel raises difficult questions about heritage and morality. The Israelites see themselves as chosen, yet chosenness comes with a dangerous temptation: the belief that being selected makes any action justified. The story repeatedly challenges that assumption.
Ben’s writing invites readers to examine the meaning of goodness. If a people are chosen by God, does that make them inherently righteous? Or does it place them under an even greater moral responsibility? Joshua’s struggle suggests that the second possibility may be closer to the truth.
The book also explores how fear shapes human behavior. The Israelites fear losing their divine promise. The Canaanites fear losing everything they have built. Both sides act out of survival instincts. That realism makes the conflict feel less like myth and more like history.
Even when the story includes moments of action, the tone remains grounded. Violence is present, but it is not romanticized. It carries consequences, both physical and spiritual. The conquest feels like a tragic necessity rather than a triumphant celebration, which makes the novel stand out in the historical fiction genre.
A Thoughtful Novel From a Versatile Author
Ben Garrido brings a unique blend of creative energy and intellectual depth to his storytelling. He is the lead author of the Enclave Series, known for thrilling adventures in an intense small-town setting, and the Old Heroes Series, which reimagines famous myths and legends from Greece, the Bible, Babylon, and Egypt. That experience with legendary material clearly informs his ability to retell ancient history with freshness and emotional weight.
His academic background adds another layer. Ben is a professor of educational philosophy at Shimonoseki City University in Southern Japan, and he has written textbooks, essays, and academic papers on philosophy and education. That scholarly influence shows in the questions this novel dares to ask. The story reads smoothly, yet it also feels like an invitation to reflect on ethics, identity, and the cost of believing in destiny.
Available in paperback and ebook on Amazon, Joshua and the Chosen People offers more than entertainment. It offers a chance to revisit a familiar story and see it differently. Joshua is not portrayed as a flawless hero. He is portrayed as a man caught between compassion and command, struggling to remain good while guiding his people through a violent turning point in history.
For readers who enjoy historical fiction that carries emotional intensity and philosophical depth, Ben’s novel delivers a powerful experience. It is dramatic, thoughtful, and unsettling in the best way. Long after the final page, the questions it raises remain.
We had the privilege of interviewing the author. Here are excerpts from the interview:
Hi, thank you so much for joining us today! Please share about yourself with our readers.
My name is Ben Garrido, and I’m a professor of educational philosophy at Shimonoseki City University in Southern Japan. I’m also the author of several novels, two textbooks, and a couple more book projects coming out soon.
I read and enjoy a very wide variety of literature, particularly the classics. Cervantes made me laugh until it hurt, the poetry of Hafiz is the perfect way to enjoy a quiet afternoon, Homer hit me hard enough that I’m still mad at Paris and Helen, etc. Among more modern writers, I tend to enjoy writers who address complex and contentious topics without judgment or editorialization. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” Thomas Savage’s “The Power of the Dog,” Mohsin Hamid’s “Reluctant Fundamentalist,” and Carlos Fuentes’ “Gringo Viejo” are some recent novels I’ve really enjoyed, while in the field of non-fiction, I absolutely adored Alice Dreger’s “Galileo’s Middle Finger,” Candace Millard’s “The River of Doubt,” and Lee McIntyre’s “Post-Truth.”
If I’m allowed to mention some Korean authors not currently translated into English, I would also like to recognize Kim Yong-kyu’s excellent “Era of Thought” (김용규, 생각의 시대), and Park Jae-hee’s wonderful “One Lesson Per Day Guide to Lao Tzu’s Book of Morality” (박재희, 1일 1강 도덕경 강독) as works I’ve learn much from, and authors I admire.
Please tell us about your journey.
I’m originally from Reno, Nevada. I’d planned to finish my degree at UNR, get a job in journalism, and work as a reporter. Unfortunately, things timed out just perfectly that I graduated into the deepest part of the Great Recession. The entry-level reporter jobs I found paid around 1300 dollars a month and required me to move to very expensive cities.
Instead, I found a job in South Korea paying about double that, with a much lower cost of living. I soon discovered that South Korean grad schools are also about 10% as expensive as US grad schools, and that the education was both high quality and impressive on the resume. It also gave me the opportunity to learn the Korean language, to get involved with big academic publishers, and to learn the incredibly rich tradition of Confucian, Taoist, and Legalist philosophy.
There is absolutely no way in hell I’d have been able to afford an MA or PhD in the US, so my academic career really does exist thanks to the excellent South Korean system.
I was offered a tenure-track professorship in 2024 in Southern Japan. I accepted this offer, and now live in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The move was quite sudden, and I didn’t have any opportunity to learn Japanese before I arrived, so, to my great shame, I’m not able to recommend any untranslated Japanese writers at this time.
What are the strategies that helped you become successful in your journey?
I worked hard to identify the things my peers were bad at, or afraid to do. When I was still living in the US, the greatest weakness I noticed in my peers was a tendency to be overly opinionated and inflexible. I responded to this by learning to hide my opinions and adapt to the beliefs and customs of the people around me.
When I moved to Korea, the biggest weakness I noticed in my peers was an unwillingness to learn the language, and a tendency to frame East Asian problems in the terms of Western morality. I adapted to these weaknesses by studying Korean and learning to judge problems from a Korean moral perspective.
When I began to work in academia, the biggest weakness I found was risk-aversion. Many of my peers were afraid to stray too far from the dominant schools of thought, too far from the methods prescribed in the biggest textbooks, too afraid to take research in new directions. I adapted to these weaknesses by both taking risks and learning how to encourage others to perceive those risks as not-so-scary. To put this more succinctly, this was the time in my life when I started seriously learning how to engineer my social environment.
Any message for our readers?
There’s no greater sign of intellectual and artistic integrity than to deeply understand the feelings, thoughts, and passions of your enemies. This does not make you soft, it does not make you a wimp, it does not make you a traitor to your own causes. On the contrary, it makes you the most powerful and useful version of yourself.
Thank you so much, Ben, for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!
