The Slightest Green

The wrenching latest from Mustafah (The Beauty of Your Face) finds a Palestinian American woman torn between her life in the U.S. and her father’s homeland. Intisar Jaber was born in Chicago and raised there by her parents until her father, Hafez, left for his birthplace of Palestine when she was nine. Two decades later, in 2007, Hafez is dying of cancer and battered from the years he spent in an Israeli prison after being arrested and charged as a terrorist, and he pleads with Intisar to visit him and learn about her roots. Intisar agrees, despite her busy life as a nurse, and travels to Bayt al-Hawa, the village her grandparents fled to when war threatened their home in Hayfa, where her grandmother still lives on land now owned by Hafez. By the time she arrives, having been delayed in Tel Aviv for questioning on suspicion of terrorism, Hafez has died and the land has been claimed by a crooked businessman. Intisar, Hafez’s sole living heir, is her grandmother’s only hope for retaining her home. As Intisar weighs whether to give up her job in Chicago or a piece of her father’s legacy, Mustafah unfolds a poignant story of familial sacrifice and cultural identity. This will move readers. (Oct.)