Descriptions, Reviews, etc.
Description:
Based on a 43-minute radio documentary that Tolan produced for "Fresh Air," this volume pursues the story into the homes and histories of the two families at its center through the present day. Their stories form a personal microcosm of the last 70 years of Israeli-Palestinian history.
Review Quotes:
"Through broad sweeps of narrative going back and forward in time, Tolan's sensitively told, eminently fair-minded narrative closes with a return to that lemon tree and its promise of reconciliation. Humane and literate--and rather daring in suggesting that the future of the Middle East need not be violent." --Kirkus, starred review
"Tolan weaves together dramatically different perceptions of the conflict and its context and explains how the lemon tree grew to become a powerful symbol of home." --
NPR.org "A moving story of both grief and hope." --
BookPage "Moving, well-crafted . . . readers will experience one of the world's most stubborn conflicts firsthand." --
Publishers Weekly, starred review "[Tolan] sensitively describes the tough friendship between Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, the daughter of Romanian Jewish immigrants who settled in Ramla, and Palestinian Bashir Khairi, who in 1967 knocked on her door to look at the house his family lost when it was forced to flee in 1948 . . . Tolan uses the beloved backyard lemon tree to drive home the shared humanity of the successive inhabitants of one home." --
Los Angeles Review of Books
