Book

Sadness is a white bird / Moriel Rothman-Zecher.

ISBN: 9781501176265 (hc)
ISBN: 1501176269
Physical Description: 274 pages ; 24 cm
Edition: First Atria Books hardcover edition.
Publisher: New York : Atria Books, 2018.
Copyright: &copy;2018.

Summary:

When Jonathan moves back to Israel at seventeen, he is eager to join the army and defend the Jewish state that his grandfather - a Salonican Jew whose community was wiped out by the Nazis - helped establish. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian Territories, a concern that only grows more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith, the twin daughter and son of his mother's friend. From that winter morning, the three become inseparable, wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, resentments, and dreams. Forced to confront the suffering of his Palestinian friends and their families under Israeli rule, Jonathan starts to question his deeply ingrained loyalties. As he is pulled in different directions, he grapples with what it means to be just one person in a violent historical struggle with so much at stake. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever.