I found this a difficult book to get into for several reasons. With so many unfamiliar words and no definition available on the kindle app, I got bogged down trying to translate words specific to the culture. The subject matter is not something I am knowledgeable about; therefore, I found myself having to "Google" parts to see what references were being made. In the beginning, my desire to continue was driven by my need to know if the dregs in the cup were true and if Mustafa figures things out. Later, I was drawn forward by the need to know more about the family.
This historical fiction novel is well written and true to the time periods it reflects. It spans many years and generations, many wars and conflicts. The reader becomes a part of the life of a once-privileged Palestinian family and their perils as they are displaced multiple times, and as new generations make decisions for themselves that make the family fear losing their cultural values. While I did not find the book to be an easy read, I did find it to be educational and very thought provoking. I think it would be a great assigned reading for a high school or college course!

Some Palestinians refer to 1948 as al-Nakbah, “the Catastrophe.” That was the year Israel became a state and Palestinians were pushed off of their land to make room. Hala Alyan uses 1948 as the starting point for her novel, Salt Houses. Through chapters narrated by members of one Palestinian family from 1948 to 2014, Alyan shows us what looking back and being rootless can do to a family. And through this family, we can see the effects of losing a homeland on an entire people: the Palestinian diaspora.

Salt Houses opens in the early 1960s as Salma, the matriarch of a small family in Nablus, is reading her daughter’s fortune in tea leaves. What she sees in the cup shocks and dismays her. She knows that Alia will have a tough life. So she refuses to tell Alia what she sees. From 1963, the novel jumps to 1965 and Salma’s son, Mustafa. Then on to the 1970s and Alia and her husband. Over the next decades, we will meet Alia’s children and their children. We will go from the former Palestine to Kuwait; Amman, Jordan; Beirut, Lebanon; and Paris.

At one point in the novel, about halfway through, one of the family muses on how nostalgia can be a disease. Throughout the book, characters regret and grow angry over the things they’ve lost. There was always a better time, in another place, that they can’t go back to. Sometimes, that better place and time was in Haifa, Israel, or Nablus or Amman. Sometimes it’s before a beloved family member died. Over time, the family loses their roots. The younger generation grow further and further away from their elders, who can remember their old homeland.

While most of the conflicts in Salt Houses are emotional ones (particularly between mothers and daughters who are so similar they can’t get along), politics and religion are present in the story. Two of the male members of the family are tempted to join terrorist organizations to regain what was taken from them. Terrorism is a shadowy force in the novel, mostly occurring off the page or between chapters. We really only learn of the fallout. The Islam that these two male characters, Mustafa and Abdullah, practice is less important for comfort or understanding as it is a vehicle and justification (through radical imams) for violence.

Alyan is savvy in that she provides more than one view of Islam. For those two men, Islam is spun as a way to take back power—something that is very attractive to men who feel (rightly or wrongly) that they’ve been abused and robbed by the state of Israel. For the women, however, especially Salma and her granddaughter, Riham, we get to see Islam as a personal comfort. Truth to tell, we see more of the women’s belief than the men’s. Through Salma and Riham, Islam becomes a way to talk to god, to see order in the world, and to comfort believers when life is hard. We see the Islam that American media rarely shows.

Not all of the characters in Salt Houses are appealing. One in particular drove me nuts when she showed up on the page. Rather, this book is a subtle depiction of politics, religion, nostalgia, and belonging. I say subtle because many of these topics crept up on me. Now that I’ve finished the book, I find myself thinking about them more–which is always a sign of a good book to me.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 2 May 2017.

A beautifully written book that encompasses so much of what is happening in the Middle East, yet does not engulf itself in war, or murder, or terrorism, but instead sets the story within generations of a Palestinian family. The story begins at a wedding where the dregs of coffee foretell of life filled with sorrow, displacement, and emotional attachments. Thus the story begins on the newlywed life of Alia and Atef: the many cities in the Middle East that they learn to call 'home' following the 1967 war, the three children they have with all the troubles of parenting that come with them, the winds that blow their family to all parts of the world, the rebellion of the teenage years and the search for identity in adulthood, and the final realization of what it means to be 'Palestinian.' This book does not tell a story of great tension, or mystery, or passion; what it does do is tell the story of a family who survives. It opened up a hitherto unforeseen part of the Middle East for me and I will be forever grateful.

A poignant story told with a neutrality that focuses on a family rather than the plight of the Palestinian people. There are hardships suffered at the hands of another country, displaced, becoming people fleeing for their safety, but the same feelings and characteristics do not alter the individuals. They may speak a different language, worship differently and eat different foods but when the surface is peeled away there is little difference in individuals the world over. They have fear, hopes, love, sorrow. They become afflicted with the same maladies. They cheer for birth as they mourn for death. They squabble amongst themselves and maybe despise but tolerate certain personal idiosyncrasies. Their living conditions may be altered by the actions of others, actions as old as mankind itself, but they remain a family of individuals related by birth, marriage and the bonds of family. The differences in the lifestyles of the children are of a generational influence, as it is most of the world over in modern civilizations. A close look shows the family to be little different from most families, in spite or maybe because of the circumstances and the people that surround them. It is an insightful look at the lives of people of a different place, a different culture, but striving to get by as so many do in so many different places. This is a peek into a family’s life in the Mideast without the finger pointing, saber rattling, the flag waving, and the chanting about other cultures, other countries. Kudos to the author for presenting this view.

In 1963, Alia is a young Palestinian woman on the eve of her wedding night. Over the next 50 years, political and military conflicts push Alia and her family out of Palestine and eventually scatter them across three continents. This novel was a beautiful and much-needed glimpse into an important area of world history many Americans miss in school, but more than that, it is the poignant story of one family and what it means when you can't really go home again.

Am hoping that the publisher will provide a kindle option for reading the arc.