Roman historian Flavius Josephus chronicles the lives of three Jewish women during the Romans' siege of Masada in A.D. 73, where more than 900 Jews were able to take refuge at the fortress for months. But first he pressures two of them into telling their versions of the story; Shirah, believed to be the witch of Moab, and Yael, an outcast to her father and neighbors. In order to tell the story, they must first go back to the beginning and share accounts of their pasts.