First published 2012
Anthony Shadid returns to his great-grandfather's estate in southern Lebanon after being captured and beaten while reporting in revolutionary Libya. Rather than going home to Boston, Beirut, or Oklahoma City where his Lebanese-American family settled, he chooses to continue rebuilding this ancestral house he began restoring three years earlier. The memoir traces two parallel reconstructions: the physical restoration of a battle-scarred home and the spiritual renewal of a war correspondent's battered psyche. Shadid weaves together the house's gradual transformation with his family's migration from Lebanon to America, creating connections between past and present. Through the act of rebuilding, he explores his own identity while documenting the changing Middle East he has covered as a journalist. The renovation becomes both a personal journey and a meditation on displacement, examining how physical spaces can heal emotional wounds. As walls rise and rooms take shape, Shadid discovers that reconstructing his great-grandfather's house helps reconstruct his own sense of belonging in a world marked by conflict and exile.
Genres: family-life, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, reconstruction
Setting: Beirut, Boston, Lebanon, Libya, Oklahoma City
Period: 21st-century
311 pages · Hardcover · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Content warnings: war