The blue between sky and water

When the newly formed state of Israel forces the Baraka family from their ancestral village of Beit Daras in 1948, only fierce, warm-hearted Nazmiyeh and her brother survive the long road to Gaza. There, amid the fragility and violence of the refugee camps, Nazmiyeh builds a family and keeps alive what remains of her lost home — including the memory of her clairvoyant little sister, Mariam.

Her brother's exile carries him all the way to America, where, generations later, his granddaughter Nur grows up unmoored and alone. In time the longing for family and roots draws Nur back across the world to Gaza, and to the great-aunt whose life is bound to her own in ways she is only beginning to understand.

Susan Abulhawa's second novel braids the lives of three generations of Palestinian women, threaded with folklore, djinn, and a touch of the mystical. Tender and unflinching, The Blue Between Sky and Water is a luminous story of kinship, displacement, and the resilience of women.