First, thank you to Eerdmans Publishing for granting me 55 days to spend with this book. (Obviously, it didn’t take me that long to finish!)
It was a beautiful testimony to a family that suffered, yet remained so faithful to God. In a country where they were persecuted, misunderstood and literally feared for their lives, they managed to create a meaningful family dynamic.
Based on the stories she received as facts from her grandmother, Leyla created a very special retelling in a way that just flowed seamlessly as a novel would have. But knowing the stories were true made it sadder in the sad parts and overwhelmingly joyful in the happy parts. I am truly thankful that it was shared with me.

Review posted on Goodreads July 16,2025

Im a big fan of generational family stories. I love seeing multiple povs throughout the years it gives you such a broad picture of the families history. This was the first time I ever read a biography structured this way. It was really special to know that the events i was reading were real. The story was incredible emotional i was brought to tears at times but there is also alot of joy and hope.
My one complaint was that the story felt a little dis jointed we jumped back and forth in time several times and once or twice a story was Told multiple times. This wasn't a huge deal but it would leave me confused and briefly unsure of what was happening.
Overall i would recommend this book. Its written like a novel so even if you aren't a non fiction fan i think you will enjoy it.
Thank you to the publisher for this arc copy to review!

Daughters of Palestine by Leyla K. King is a memoir spanning a hundred years of the women in her family, from the demise of the Ottoman Empire to WWII to the creation of Israel, and what it meant for their family to be displaced from their ancestral homeland. We often forget the plight of the Palestinian Christians who are caught in the crossfire between Jews and Muslims. It is sad that there are so few Christians remaining in the Holy Land, the place where Christianity as born. But Christians have a unique perspective: we know we are merely pilgrims on this earth; we pray for the grace to be brought to our eternal home in heaven with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Ms. King has captured the voices of her ancestors in this book. It's an intimate portrayal of a family amidst the tumultuous and bloodiest events in recent history. I highly recommend this fast-paced memoir. You can pair it with Lawrence of Arabia by Scott Anderson to get a sense of how the modern Middle East was created. Many thanks to Eerdmans for a review copy of Daughters of Palestine.

Coincidentally, today is also the Feast of St. Charbel Makhlouf, a Lebanese priest-monk known for his holiness. Let us pray to him for peace in the Middle East.

★★★★★ — A deeply moving and important memoir of faith, resilience, and memory

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of Daughters of Palestine by Leyla K. King.

This book is a touching and powerful look into a Christian Palestinian family across generations, told with tenderness, empathy, heartbreak, and hope. It centres on three women — Leyla’s great-grandmother Aniiseh, her grandmother Bahi, and Leyla herself — with snippets of her mother’s life threaded through. The result is an intimate and loving tableau of matrilineal memory that spans war, displacement, and survival.

We begin with Aniiseh, whose life in Palestine before the Nakba gives us a glimpse of what was. Most of the memoir, however, is told through Bahi, Leyla’s grandmother. She fled Palestine just weeks before the Nakba, newly married and pregnant. Through her recollections, we experience the trauma of being forced to leave behind everything familiar. From Haifa to Beirut, then Damascus and Kuwait, back to Beirut, and finally, in the midst of a civil war, to the United States. I'm not someone who travels easily or takes change well and imagining how much displacement she and her family had to go through made me feel weary.

There’s something quietly devastating about the fact that this family, whose story still holds so much pain, is one of the “lucky” ones. One that managed to stay together. One that eventually found safety. Reading it, I felt the exhaustion Bahi must have carried: the grief of not having roots, of having to move her children again and again with no guarantee of peace.

And yet, Daughters of Palestine is filled with love. It’s a memory of a people's will to survive, yes, but also of joy and the beauty of familial bonds. I adored the personal anecdotes, especially the one about the family heirloom: a cross passed down between women that, supposedly, helps the wearer find a good husband within a year.

Leyla’s voice is full of reverence for the women who came before her. The writing often reads like a conversation, one passed down between generations.

This is a story of motherhood, sisterhood, and migration. It’s a story of what’s lost, what’s carried forward, and what still endures. It is, above all, a story that deserves to be heard.

This book is beautifully written, both timely and timeless. The vignette structure makes for effortless reading about difficult, but important topics. One of the best memoirs I've read in years.

This sweetly serious story for children about the importance of telling the truth. makes its point using well-drawn cartoon like illustrations, I reccommend this book to be read to younger students, as older students may find it too simplistic.