Publishing is a slow-brewing business, and after a long wait, I’m thrilled to announce that my novel is finally available to readers!

Where Jasmine Blooms is the story of an Arab-American family, as told by three women in the family. The novel is set in Seattle, as well as in Amman, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. To read a more detailed write-up of my novel, please see my previous post.

Where to Purchase a Copy

The book is available online at BarnesandNoble.com, as well as Amazon.com, and Amazon.co.uk. Available in hard copy or kindle.

Alternatively, if you live in the US, you can walk into a Barnes and Noble store, and you might find it on the shelf. If not, you can order the book there (and suggest they carry the book).

Don’t forget your local library. You can request that your library carry the book.

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Thank you to my friends and the various readers who read early drafts of the story. I appreciate your support, encouragement, and feedback. I could not have done it without you.

Finally, I’d like to share a recent review of my book. This one from Booklist:

A novel that handles cross-cultural relationships with remarkable sympathy, weaves in the personal and the political with finesse, and explores the Palestinian question is worthy of applause. Warah also beautifully portrays Palestinian Zainab Mansour and her American daughters-in-law, Margaret and Alison, characters with depth and complexity, and for this she deserves a standing ovation. Warah lays out the challenges generated by religious, cultural, and linguistic barriers as the various players interact in a sweeping tale that takes readers from Seattle to Jordan and Jerusalem. Zainab’s sons, Ahmed and Khalid, form strong foils for the stories of the three women and bring further dimension to Warah’s themes of home and immigrant identity. As we see the Mansour family gathering for tea in diverse places and circumstances, Warah reveals how the most common of daily choices reflects profound questions of faith and self. With great storytelling finesse and compassion, Warah brings readers into lives that may be different from their own, banishing stereotypes, illuminating the universal experiences underlying persistent political clashes, and offering a heart-expanding experience.

— Shoba Viswanathan

 

WHERE JASMINE BLOOMS: a novel by Holly S. Warah

At last! After many years of writing, revising, and querying, my novel Where Jasmine Blooms will reach its readers. My debut novel is scheduled to be published by Skyhorse Publishing in April, 2017.

DESCRIPTION

To the Mansours, an Arab American family living in Seattle, love knows no borders. But despite our best efforts, sometimes love—and family—are foreign to us . . .

American-born Margaret Mansour wants nothing more than to rekindle the struggling twenty-year marriage to her Palestinian husband, Ahmed—but not if it means uprooting their home and children in America and moving halfway across the world.

Young and ambitious Alison Mansour has a degree in Near East Studies, but her American education and Syrian background are of no use when her new marriage begins to crumble under the weight of cultural and religious differences. The communication between Alison and her husband is already shaky; how will they cope with the arrival of their first child?

Zainab Mansour, the matriarch of her family, never expected to live in America, but after the death of her husband she finds herself lost in a faithless country and lonely within the walls of her eldest son’s home. She wants what’s best for her children but struggles to find her place in a new landscape.

Emerging from the interwoven perspectives of these three women comes a story of love and longing, culture and compromise, home and homeland. Exploring the complex political backdrop of the Middle East from a personal perspective, Where Jasmine Blooms travels from the suburbs of Seattle to the villas of Jordan and the refugee camps of the West Bank, on an emotional journey exploring what it means to be a family.

Where Jasmine Blooms

A Novel by Holly S. Warah

$24.99 / Hardcover / April 2017

304 pages / 6 x 9 / ISBN 978-1-62872-749-4

 

AUTHOR PROFILE

Holly S. Warah has traveled widely throughout the Arab world. She has lived in the region for seventeen years and been married into an Arab family for twenty-eight years. Her short fiction has won a national award, first place in The Writer magazine’s 2011 Short Story Contest, as well as several regional awards, including first place in the 2010 Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA) Literary Contest and first place in the 2011 Southwest Writers Writing Contest. Holly has a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language and has taught for more than ten years in Seattle and Dubai, where she now lives.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

“Steeped in the smells, flavors and customs of the Palestinian culture, Warah gives us a family quietly roiling under modern and time-worn conflicts. We watch as they, sometimes quietly and sometimes with riveting raucous, struggle to reconcile disparate cultures, harrowing politics and the place for individualism. The matriarch carries her anxieties like rattling chains, the western daughter-in-law waffles on whether her mixed marriage home is stifling or supportive, and a newer mixed marriage teeters even as it produces a child. This keenly told story of an immigrant family straddling two continents is a worthy read as we plod through a world grappling with pluralism.”

– Nadia Hashimi, internationally bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

 PREORDER

 You can preorder your copy today from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or from your favorite independent bookstore.

Thank you,

Holly

At last! My novel is complete and on submission.

House Mansour is a novel set in Seattle and the Middle East. It tells the story of a sprawling Arab family and the American women married into it.

I am represented by Lotus Lane Literary Agency. For any and all inquiries to House Mansour, please contact Priya Doraswamy at