So this is the second book in this series, Lost in Thyme by Lilas Taha - Author  . The first book, Found In Thyme, was reviewed in a previous post . This book begins as Sami Amara is barricaded inside a bathroom in a Turkey airport and it is being attacked by terrorists. He protects a mother and two children, only to be arrested by the Turkish authorities. He disappears as Petra and Robert search for clues and anything about his whereabouts. Petra returns to Texas and takes charge of the company and his niece's care, as well as the delicate psyche of his mother. As the rest of the book unfolds, Sami "finds" his way home, Petra and Sami "find" and explore their marriage and love, Petra "finds" her strength and inner power, and even the mother finds sanity to a certain degree. Sami finds and asserts his identity as a Palestinian American and faces the haters who want to destroy his company. He is sought by a crazy ex GF who makes things complicated. I enjoyed this conclusion to the Sami- Petra love story, and another peek into the lives of Christian Palestinian Americans. #drHodaZbookreviews #booksaboutPalestine #Palestinianvoices

Salt Houses is another book of #palestinianvoices  and #booksaboutpalestine   #booksaboutisrael  . It is written by a psychologist Dr. @hala.n.alyan Hala Alyan. It follows the lives of the children, grand children, great grandchildren of Selma, who reads her daughter, Alia's, coffee cup, and sees the struggles of the years to come. Alia goes on to the Gulf, her kids go from Jordan to the US to France to Lebanon. Her husband struggles with feelings of guilt towards his best friend and Alia's brother, who has disappeared under the Israeli occupation. She herself struggles with her feelings of loneliness and finding her place away from her land. The description at the end where she deteriorates into dementia and the past collides with the present is heartbreaking and poignant. Her grandaughter returns to the land for a visit in a closing of the circle of time. I totally recommend this book. #hodazbookreviews #ArabAmericanAuthors

This #bookaboutpalestine  is probably one of my absolute favorites. It is fascinating, well written, engaging, and detailed. It begins with a Bedouin tribe in 1948 fleeing the war in Palestine, and the story of a gypsy girl, as she is faced with a horrible arranged marriage. her mother courageously secretly arranges for her to run away on the back of a visitor/ sheikh, who carries her to safety. She leaves behind her life, with nothing but a bracelet made of Liras. Each chapter is a new segment in time, each chapter is the story of someone. All the characters are connected in that they are members of this small village, and connected in some way to this land.  It shows the struggles through the times of people under occupation, but still with the strength, hope and resiliance to search for love, and recover from loss. Some stories, like that of Evangeline are heart lifting with hope, and other stories like Salma's story, will break your heart. It ends in the 90's with the story of one of the grandaughters of the gypsy lady, returning to the village after years of living in the USA. A well deserved winner of the Arab American Book Awards 2016 . #bookreview   #hodazbookreviews   #booksaboutPalestine #booksaboutIsrael #PalestinianVoices   #arabamericanwriters

So this is a book by #palestinianwriter  Randa Jarrar. Daughter of an Egyptian mother and Palestinian father, the book is a memoir of her life in Kuwait as a child, to Egypt, and then to the US. If I would describe her character as anything it would be "defiant". She is strong, obnoxious, smart, smart mouthed, in spite of a physically abusive father, instability after the Gulf war and being forced to leave Kuwait, and as an immigrant to the US in her teens. She explores her ties to Palestine, ties to her parents, ties to the Sea in Alexandria, she explores her sexuality, her relationships, her dream to become an author, despite her oppressive father and his dictates. Again, she is defiant throughout. I loved the way the tone of writing changes through the book as you see the world through her eyes as a child and by the end it's like reading the diary of a young woman. I recommend this book as a Palestinian experience in the Gulf to the US, and the challenges of identity and independence. #booksaboutPalestine #booksaboutIsrael #arabamerican #arabamericanauthors   #RandaJarrar   #bookreview   #HodaZbookreview #PalestinianVoices RAWI (Radius of Arab American Writers)

This book is written by Omar ElAkkad, an Egyptian American journalist. The cover tells it all, really. It's a bluntly real book that alternates between scenes of destruction and disaster in Gaza, with surreal moments in the author's life, with commentary about politics and journalism in today's world. We travel with him back in time as a child in the Gulf and his views on the West back then, and how disillusioned he becomes after moving to Canada and the US. He talks about his job from behind the scenes, in the field in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Gaza. He shows the cracks within the journalist communities between the unsaid pact to remain neutral and those who want to speak up. The hypocrisy of politics in the US where ideals of freedom and equality are easily done away when faced with a threat to preservation of power. The rift between them and humanity is exposed and has never been more clear than seeing the genocide in Gaza. One day, everyone will look back and say they we were against the genocide. This author, and all of us, are waiting for that tomorrow to come.

Author Lilas Taha - Author   is well known for her book, Bitter Almonds, but she also has other books that are wonderful. This book, Lost in Thyme, is a fictional story about 2 second generation Palestinian Americans whose lives cross unexpectedly in the aftermath of "Sami's" father's passing. "Petra" is given shares of his father's company. As they both search for the reasons why, they discover how interwined their fathers were in the struggle of Palestinian identity and independence. They explore their own identities and connections to the mother land, as well as face their own demons and insecurities. Mental illness is touched as Sami's mother is plagued with an intense fear of "Watchers" coming to steal her and other people's children. She tries to hide them in closed spaces, where the Watchers can't reach. The family priest seems to be the only person who can keep her grounded. Petra also has struggled with feelings of abandonment and loss, having never met her father, who disappeared in Beirut before she was born, and the loss of her husband as well in recent years. Sami has hallucinations of Petra as a child, as if he had seen her before, and intense fears of closed spaces. He deals with loss of a father he never really connected with. There is a backdrop of Kuwait, where both families had ties to, and where many Palestinians called home until Yasser Arafat sided with Saddam Hussein and they were effectively kicked out, thereby loosing their second home. I enjoyed the complexity of the characters, the suspense of finding out hidden family secrets, and the very raw emotions of love and loss. The book is also a peek into the lives of the Palestinian Christians in exile or under occupation. #bookaboutPalestine #Palestinianvoices #bookreview #hodazbookreviews   #arabamericanwriters #PalestinianChristians