The Blue Between Sky and Water: A Novel

Summary

“Precise, courageous, and dazzling.” —Teju Cole

From the author of the international bestseller Mornings in Jenin, a powerful, passionate story set in Gaza, of a family severed by colonialism, with a new introduction from Hala Alyan.

In the small Palestinian farming village of Beit Daras, the women of the Baraka family invite shock. Nazmiyeh is brazen and fiercely protective of her clairvoyant little sister, Mariam, and of their mother, Um Mahmoud, known for the fearsome spirit that sometimes possesses her.

When the family is forced by the newly formed State of Israel to leave their ancestral home, only Nazmiyeh and her brother survive the long road to Gaza. Amidst the violence and fragility of the refugee camp, Nazmiyeh builds a family, navigates crises, and nurtures what remains of Beit Daras’s community. But her brother continues his exile’s journey to America, where, upon his death, his granddaughter Nur grows up alone, in a different kind of exile. That is, until her longing for family and roots eventually beckon her to Gaza.