Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah

 genre: literary fiction

Muneer and Saeedah are newlyweds living in Cleveland, Ohio - but their roots are on the coast of the Red Sea, in Saudi Arabia. When Saeedah's unhappiness leads to divorce, their lives settle on different sides of the world and their young daughter, Hanadi, stays in the United States with her mother.  But Saeedah's worry about loosing Hanadi becomes so intense that she takes her daughter and disappears, leaving Muneer in Saudi Arabia desperate to find her abducted daughter and gutted by her loss.

Literary and haunting, this book does such a good job of helping me understand Muneer and the worlds that he navigates.  Hanadi's journey, the things that she'd forgotten, disjointed memories and the way she tries to put her life back together after a childhood drenched in secrecy, it settles in such a true way.  This may be the first time I've read about authentic Saudi life in a novel and the compassion with which I was guided through relationships and culture was so well done.  Bride of the Sea is a heavy story sometimes, spanning decades, as people who don't know each other have to find common ground and as foreignness is explored in all its complicated nuance - both for those in a new country and those who go back to a once familiar one.  I wished I'd been helped to understand Saeedah better - while see the world through both Hanadi and Muneer's eyes, Saeedah is mostly a mystery, which frustrated me a little.  I can only compliment the writing, it's poignant and lovely, I just was left feeling vaguely wanting.