When fourteen-year-old Liyanne Abboud, her younger brother, and her parents move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians. Fourteen-year-old Liyana Abboud loves to hear her father call her habibi--Arabic for "darling". But she's not prepared for her family's decision to move from St. Louis to Jerusalem. This provocative first novel from the acclaimed poet builds a bridge to the Arab world, introduces a family readers won't soon forget, and offers a hope for peace.
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Nye, an accomplished poet who is the daughter of a Palestinian father and American mother, drew on her own adolescent experiences for this novel about a girl whose family moves to Israel. Liyana's adjustment to her new life and culture and her first experiences of friendship-turning-to-love with a Jewish boy are sensitively and poetically portrayed.
