Publisher's Synopsis
Book 1 in the Jerusalem series: The story of how Israel became Palestine It is 1933 and two young women from very different worlds face an uncertain future. Both are in love, but both are faced with an impossible choice. Marie Helder is a butcher's daughter in a little town in Bavaria, as Germany begins its love affair with Hitler and National Socialism. She has a schoolgirl crush on a boy in her class. His family is rich, well respected - and Jewish. Far away in Palestine, the centuries-old rhythms of sleepy Rab'allah have been disturbed by the building of a Jewish kibbutz on the swamp in the valley below. The Jews are the future, the twentieth century. The Jews are the enemy. Sarah Landauer does not think of herself as anyone's enemy - and neither does the young man she loves, Rishou Hass'an. But his father is muktar of the Arab village, and he can see the future sweeping towards them, and it fills him with dread. From the snow-hushed winter streets of Nazi Bavaria, to the burned hills of Palestine, from the Alte Post to the Al-Aqsa, four very different families prepare for the deadly conflicts to come. Should Marie Helder and Sarah Landauer turn on those they love? From the holocaust to the bloody creation of the state of Israel in 1948, romance and terror collide in a novel of ancient hatreds and forbidden loves.
