A great historical fiction about home and loss, family and life. It starts with a wedding so i was a little worried we wouldn't make it out of patriarchal themes, but Alyan delivered! We primarily follow one character as a daughter to great great grandmother, the branches of her family throughout the Palestinian diaspora to Nablus, Paris, Beruit, Boston, Amman.The characters are so vivid it's hard to believe we covered so much ground.

You may have heard something about war or something they call "the Palestinian Israeli conflict" or "Israel Hamas war" or the "Palestine question," but this book will bring color to those vague terms and life to people only mentioned as one of 9,400 dead or "collateral damage." Though only fiction, I think the stories that inspired this work will bring understanding of issues minimized or hidden by the headlines.