Wright Family Records: Appomattox County, Virginia, Birth Records, Marriage Records, and Personal Property Tax Lists Book

It's important to differentiate between how well parts of Late for Tea at the Deer Palace are written and how much I disliked the people Tamara Chalabi writes about, namely, her family. Except for her grandfather, Hadi, they're all unsympathetic, which begs the question: is the author aware of that or is she as entitled and out of touch, as the three generations she portrays, starting with the main character and matriarch, Bibi. At one point, when war breaks out, the family temporarily relocates and must live without servants. Bibi becomes enraged to see her husband, Hadi, making baklava for the family.

In much of the book, Chalabi does an excellent job of telling her family's story, while seamlessly weaving in clear explanations of Iraq's complex history, politics and ethnic grievances (often stemming from the Sunni and Shia split) over religion, territory, oil, leadership, etc.

Half way through, I began to wonder about the subtitle: The Lost Dreams of my Iraqi Family. For the Chalabi's, dreams primarily mean living in an intact peaceful Iraq. That peace, and one son's illness that led to blindness, seem to be the only things this family has not been able to control.

The Chalabi's were Middle Eastern royalty. They built palaces at will. After one was erected and Bibi didn't like it, they simply built another one. Perhaps it's the custom in Iraq, but the Chalabi's don't use their vast fortune to make life better for the less well off. They keep it within the family. The one exception was an act of generosity by Hadi.

In keeping with the theme of Chalabi's getting what they want, Ahmad, the author's father was obsessed with ridding his country of Saddam. Ahmad is also the Iraqi insider who's been accused of feeding the United States false intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Whether he's partly responsible for our rush to war and the subsequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of American and Iraqis, I don't know, but the Chalabi's always seem to get what they want. By Terry Baker Mulligan (Sugar Hill Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem)