The Way to the Spring

April 4, 2016
Teeming with heartbreak, irony, and intimate moments of joy, this first nonfiction book from journalist and novelist Ehrenreich (Ether) germinated from his 2013 New York Times Magazine cover story entitled (more provocatively) “Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?” For readers perplexed by the Israel-Palestine conflict, he intersperses his story with crash-course history lessons. But the author’s real project is to humanize ordinary Palestinians for Americans, capturing the humiliations and indignities—bureaucratic, psychological, and physical—that they suffer under occupation; their fear, anger, and frustration; and their families and celebrations. He paints a vivid portrait of life in three locations: the village of Nabi Saleh, where families have been protesting weekly for the right to use a spring that was theirs until Israeli settlers claimed it, and are consistently met with force; the city of Hebron, a puzzle box of checkpoints and segregated zones, and a powder keg of Jewish and Palestinian resentments; and the village of Umm al-Kheir, where a way of life is quietly dying in the shadow of ever-expanding settlements. With a journalist’s keen eye for detail and a novelist’s ardor for language and its ability to move people, Ehrenreich will incite renewed compassion in his readers. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis Agency.

April 15, 2016
A devastating portrait of unending turbulence in Palestine.From 2011 to 2014, journalist and novelist Ehrenreich (Ether, 2011, etc.) lived for several extended periods in the West Bank, observing, questioning, and interacting with residents. In a region inflamed by "intractable" oppression and violence, the author aims to tell stories "about resistance, and about people who resist. My concern is with what keeps people going when everything appears to be lost." Acknowledging that objectivity is impossible, Ehrenreich hopes to achieve "something more modest...truth." Revealing truth, though, is hardly a modest goal in a place where contested truths erupt in death and destruction. "There were greater and lesser sorrows," writes the author, "but sorrow was a given. So was the pain of humiliation, the hard pride of refusal, a certain rage." In Nabi Saleh, Hebron, Ramallah, and other towns, the author focuses on individuals engaged in protest and grass-roots resistance efforts against Israel's "almost complete control over the Palestinian economy," settlers' determination to take over land, arbitrary rules and controls, and a pervasive atmosphere of fear. Israeli soldiers attack Palestinians with rubber bullets, Molotov cocktails, a fetid spray, and tear gas; settlers throw acid and urine; residents counter with bricks, stones, and rockets that the author characterizes as "unnerving" but, he insists, incapable of causing damage. Hebron struck the author as the most horrific: where it was normal to hear screams from soldiers' beatings; where each day schoolchildren were fired on with tear gas; where people were arrested and detained as "a warning"; where streets were laden with "trash, bottles, bricks, and concrete blocks." Ehrenreich has no faith in American-led peace talks and castigates Benjamin Netanyahu for "near-constant deception, insult, and bad faith" and for fomenting "fear and rage." Although Ehrenreich feels optimistic about the determination of Palestinians to resist, this visceral book, sorrowfully, portends no end to the horror.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.