Our Cut of Salt

Nuhad's childhood home in Haifa is haunted. Cats keep away from its perimeter, odd noises come from inside, and people who lived there have vanished without a trace. Nuhad has not been back since the Nakba in 1948, yet she kept a place for the house in her heart, and the house kept one for her.

After Nuhad dies, her granddaughter Marina decides to visit the house. She has spent her life shut out of her culture and family history, and she wants answers. Her mother, Haifa, who is named for the city her family lost, agrees to the trip with reluctance. Haifa knows from experience that some secrets are better left buried.

The house Marina finds is no longer a home. It has become a festering wound that infects whatever touches it, and the deeper Marina digs into her family's past, the sicker she becomes. Nuhad's ghost sends warnings, but Haifa rushes to her daughter's side anyway.

This is a haunted-house novel following three generations of Palestinian women, with the ghost story carrying the weight of exile, loss and return.

The three women meet in the ancestral home and have to lay the haunting to rest before the secrets of the past drown them. Expect an intimate, unsettling read centred on what it means to make a home, lose it, and come back to find it changed.