Meet Nethaneel - Prince of Issachar

Prince of Israel Series on Kindle Vella features twelve fictional princes modeled after the Princes of Israel mentioned in the Old Testament in the book of Numbers, Chapter One verses five-fifteen.

Numbers 1:5-15

Allow me to introduce my character, Nethaneel, the Prince of Issachar!

At the beginning of the story, Nethaneel is a bit of a know-it-all. He thinks he’s better than others because he’s wealthy and educated. Nethaneel is a religious scholar, a mighty man of valor, has an understanding of the times, a knowledge of the world, is scholarly, wealthy, and united in wealth and learning.

Basically, he needs to be knocked off his high horse!

In the first paragraph of the book Prince of Israel Series on Kindle Vella, he quite literally knocks into a woman named Naomi.

Naomi is a hard-working, uneducated cook at the hotel when Nethaneel is staying for the Tribute Festival. She has no idea he’s a prince and he doesn't tell her (for several chapters!). 

In the story, Nethaneel and Naomi are competing for grant money from the same grantor. Nethaneel wants to repair a library at his alma mater university. Naomi wants to provide scholarships for low-income teens to attend college.

Nethaneel realizes fixing a library is important, but not if the youth of the community can’t afford to attend college. He immediately withdraws his proposal and asks the grant committee to fund Naomi’s proposal instead. He even volunteers to help run her youth program.

Thus begins a potential romance between Nethaneel and Naomi. You’ll have to read the book to watch how that plays out.

A little more about Nethaneel: he is twenty-two years old, lives in modern-day Kfar Tavor, Israel, and is best friends with his former college roommate, Eliab (Eli), the Prince of Zebulon. Eli is the guy who helped Nethaneel write their grant proposal. Needless to say, Eli is quite mad when he finds out Nethaneel withdrew their proposal… until he meets Naomi’s best friend, Hayley. But that’s a story for a different day.

You can meet Nethaneel and Naomi, Eli and Hayley, and all the other characters, now in the Prince of Israel Series on Kindle Vella.

Here are a few paragraphs of Nethaneel’s opening chapter:
Hurrying around a blind corner in the hallway between the conference center and the hotel, Nethaneel ran smack into a woman. The stack of papers he was holding flew into the air along with a similar stack of papers she was holding.
 
“I am so sorry! Oh my gosh, I am so late for my meeting,” the woman said, dropping to her knees. “I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I’m late turning in my proposal, and I’m supposed to clock in for my job in five minutes, and, oh my gosh, why do these all look alike?” She was as flustered as he was.
 
“This isn’t your fault.” Nethaneel crouched to gather the papers that had scattered on the sculpted carpeting. She was right; they all looked alike. Not bothering to glance at the woman, Nethaneel couldn’t help noticing her intoxicating smell—a subtle vanilla hand lotion combined with the lingering notes of cooked sausage. Now he was hungry. “I was walking too fast, and I really should have been paying better attention.”
 
He sat back on his heels, clutching a stack of loose pages, and finally lifted his gaze to the woman who smelled like breakfast.
 
He stopped short. Forget his appointment. He wanted to take this woman to brunch. Shaking off the thought, he realized she probably had already eaten if she was smelling like sausage.
 
The depths of her tired eyes showed more maturity than her youthful face would imply as if she’d witnessed her fair share of a hard life than most women in their early twenties. Disheveled tendrils of brown hair framed her face after falling loose from her long braid. Something about her made Nethaneel want to take her in his arms and make all the problems in the world go away.
 
As if he hadn’t embarrassed himself enough by scattering two stacks of nearly identical papers into the air and then all over the floor, followed by staring at her with a slack jaw, Nethaneel blurted out, “You smell really good.”
 
“Good as in, ‘it’s obvious you spent the morning cooking overpriced food for rude businessmen at a high-end hotel full of people who want their over-easy eggs cooked all the way through and their sausage crispy instead of chewy?’ or good as in, ‘you obviously haven’t had time for a shower since last night when you got home from yesterday’s double shift?’”
 
“Am I right to assume that there is no correct way to answer that question?” Nethaneel asked, fighting a grin and losing miserably.
 
Read the rest of the story now in the Prince of Israel Series on Kindle Vella.

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