A Girl Made of Dust Book

A Girl Made of Dust is a sophisticated exploration of 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to the shifting contours within her household: hardly speaking and refusing to work, her father has inexplicably withdrawn from his family; her once-youthful mother looks so sad that Ruba imagines her heart must have withered like a fig in the heat; and Ruba’s older brother has begun to secretly meet with older boys who carry guns. When Ruba decides that to salvage her family she must first save her father, she uncovers a long-buried secret that will send her on a journey away from the safety of childhood and into a brutal reality where men kill in the name of faith and race, past wrongs remain unforgiven, and where nothing less than courageous acts of sacrifice and unity can offer survival.
A Girl Made of Dust is a coming-of-age story sparked, but not consumed, by violence and loss. This strikingly assured debut captures both a country and a childhood plagued by a conflict that even at its darkest and most threatening, carries the promise of healing and retribution.

Publishers Weekly

This debut novel, written by a woman who experienced firsthand the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, weaves the horrors of war with the love and devotion of family. Ruba is seven years old, living in a small Christian village outside of Beirut during the Israeli invasion. Her father is depressed and lethargic; her older brother, Naji, avoids the family, more interested in guns and the local thugs. As the conflict draws closer to the town, causing acts of inhumanity based on religious differences, Ruba learns a secret from her father's past that forces her to face the reality and cruelty around her. Abi-Ezzi walks the delicate tightrope between man's inhumanity and the power and strength family members must draw upon in order to survive. The book is beautifully written, lyrical, with vivid, sensual descriptions that are sophisticated yet completely believable as experienced and retained by a child. ("My bedroom smelt of cotton and books, Mami and Papi's room smelled of ironed sheets.") This disturbing, beautiful book, in turn hopeful and despairing, brings clarity and compassion to an untenable situation. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.