Description:
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction
The Abadi Family saga begins when a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story between a Palestinian and a Jew ends in predictable tragedy. The family flees to America to mend, but encounters only more turmoil that threatens to tear the family apart. In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi's world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar's husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister's death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US. As Tamar struggles to maintain the integrity of the family's Jewish Israeli identity against the backdrop of the American "melting pot" culture, a Palestinian family moves into the apartment upstairs and she is forced to reckon with her narrow thinking as her daughter falls in love with the Palestinian son. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar's determination to separate the two sets into motion a series of events that have the power to destroy her relationship with her daughter, her marriage, and the family she has worked so hard to protect. This powerful debut novel explores Tamar's struggle to keep her family intact, to accept love that is taboo, and grapples with how exile forces us to reshape our identity in ways we could not imagine.
Brief description: Zeeva Bukai was born in Israel and raised in New York City. Her honors include a fellowship at the New York Center for Fiction and residencies at Hedgebrook, and Byrdcliffe Artist In Residence program. She is the assistant director of academic support at SUNY Empire State University and lives in Brooklyn with her family. She won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction for The Anatomy of Exile.