The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of A Woman Is No Man returns with a striking exploration of the world of a Palestinian-American woman, the meaning of a fulfilling life, and the ways our unresolved past affects our present.
“A complicated mother-daughter drama that looks at the lasting effects of intergenerational trauma and what it takes to break the cycle of abuse.”—Time
Yara Murad has worked hard to outrun the demons of her tumultuous childhood in Brooklyn. Now ensconced in suburban North Carolina, Yara has achieved everything she aspired to: She is highly educated and teaches art at a local college. She is also a wife and mother, raising two precocious daughters with her businessman husband, Fadi. But her marriage to businessman Fadi is nothing like the high-conflict relationship she witnessed between her parents growing up, and she knows her life is worlds better than her mother’s, with the kind of freedom her mother had only dreamed.
So why doesn’t it feel that way most days? Why does Yara experience flashes of anger out of nowhere, or a sadness she can’t name? When an incident at the college threatens Yara’s job and peace of mind, her mother suggests that a family curse could be to blame. While Yara doesn’t believe in old superstitions, she wonders if an evil eye may be at work. Shaken to her core, Yara finds her carefully constructed world beginning to implode. To save herself, Yara must finally confront the childhood she thought she’d left behind and forge her own path forward.