--written in 2008
--# of pages: 236
--1st sentence: "'It's thanks to the 'adra that you didn't get killed today.'"
--last sentence: "As I burrowed into the quiet place where the wall met the floor, I had one last thought: I was glad he'd drunk all that water, and that he was no longer a cactus standing motionless in a pot full of dry cracked earth."
--synopsis: "Set in a Christian village in Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli invasion and narrated....by a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl, A Girl Made of Dust explores one family's private battle to survive in the midst of civil war. In her peaceful town outside Beirut, Ruba is slowly awakening to the shifting contours within her household: hardly speaking and refusing to work, her father has inexplicably withdrawn from his family in favor of his favorite armchair; her once-youthful mother looks so sad that Ruba imagines her heart must have withered like a fig in the heat; and Ruba's older brother, Naji, has started to spend less time with Ruba in order to meet with older boys, some of whom carry guns. When Ruba decides that to salvage her family she must first save her father, she uncovers a secret from his past that will send her on a journey away from the safe fantasies of youth and into a brutal reality where men kill in the name of faith and race, past wrongs remain unforgiven, and nothing less than courageous acts of self-sacrifice and unity can offer survival. As Israeli troops invade Beirut and danger moves ever closer, Ruba realizes that she alone may not be able to keep her loved ones safe, and it is up to her father to shed the shackles of his past and lead his family to better, if uncertain, future..."
I did not get "into" the book until roughly the middle, but once I did, it was over. I was watery-eyed by the end of it, but the ending itself tore my heart out. This could be because I am a naturally emotional person, but still--agh, just read it. Good book!
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