A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide

A beautiful and inspiring memoir about finding love and a home in a war zoneMoving her family to a war zone was not a simple choice, but she's determined to find hope, love, and peace amid the conflict in the Middle East.When young mother Stephanie Saldana finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus road-the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem-she sees more than a Middle Eastern flash point. She sees what could be home.Before her eyes, the fragile community of Jerusalem opens, and she starts to build her family to outlast the chaos. But as her son grows, so do the military checkpoints and bomb sirens, and Stephanie must learn to bridge the gap between safety and home, always questioning her choice to start her family and raise her child in a country at war.A Country Between is a celebration of faith, language, and family-and a mother's discovery of how love can fill the spaces between what was once shattered, leaving us whole once more.

“"Thoughtful, candid and achingly lovely, A Country Between celebrates the moments of beauty and truth that appear even--or especially--in broken and hard places, bringing light and healing in unexpected ways." -- Shelf Awareness for Readers, STARRED review”

"When we read or see TV reports about conflict in the Middle East, we would do well to remember that real people with real hopes and dreams are in many ways at the center of the story...there also are families like Stephanie Salda a's, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or something else. And this book makes those families much more understandable." - Bill's "Faith Matters" Blog "Salda a builds an impressive sense of genuine emotion, and she vividly explores the array of life in that seething section of Jerusalem...a serene memoir in which the author takes valuable time to regard the character of the Palestinian people and their way of life. " - Kirkus-STARRED review "This candid, tenderly rendered love story begins in a Syrian monastery, where Salda a (Bread of Angels), a Texas-born journalist, falls for Fr d ric, a French novice monk...Salda a describes in wonderful detail how, as their family expands, they stay in a place where so little makes sense, guided solely by their hope in the future." - Publishers Weekly "A testament to the couple's full embrace of peace and a commitment to living the lives they chose together...this book about hope in uncertain times reads especially poignantly for anyone looking darkly at the future. " - Library Journal ""This fascinating book captures the reality of living in colliding worlds...Saldana's observations about the realities of marriage, motherhood, and aging...offer the sense of having had a uplifting conversation with a thoughtful soul. Rather than attempting to answer political questions about the region, Saldana shares a curious kind of hope by showing how life goes on no matter the circumstances... readers gain a deeper understanding of love and faith." " - Booklist, STARRED review --This fascinating book captures the reality of living in colliding worlds...Saldana's observations about the realities of marriage, motherhood, and aging...offer the sense of having had a uplifting conversation with a thoughtful soul. Rather than attempting to answer political questions about the region, Saldana shares a curious kind of hope by showing how life goes on no matter the circumstances... readers gain a deeper understanding of love and faith.-- - Booklist, STARRED review "Thoughtful, candid and achingly lovely, A Country Between celebrates the moments of beauty and truth that appear even--or especially--in broken and hard places, bringing light and healing in unexpected ways." - Shelf Awareness for Readers, STARRED review "Saldana's writing is gorgeous; it is clear she is a poet. In one short letter to Joseph, she says that on Nablus Road they "stroll[ed] through love and languages." A COUNTRY BETWEEN is such a stroll, through love, language, worlds, religions, and family life. " - Great New Books "The writing of the book is gorgeous. There is the travel aspect of the book certainly but there is also a very personal family-oriented bend to the book. " - A Bookish Affair "Saldana builds an impressive sense of genuine emotion, and she vividly explores the array of life in that seething section of Jerusalem...a serene memoir in which the author takes valuable time to regard the character of the Palestinian people and their way of life. " - Kirkus-STARRED review "If an angel were to write a book, this would be it. Stephanie Saldana's memoir of her years as a young bride and new mother on Jerusalem's Nablus Road is infused with grace, rich in wisdom. With her French husband, a former novice monk, she makes a home on one of the fault lines where the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and Christians sometimes mesh, but often collide. A Country Between reminds us that grief is as indispensable to joy as light is to shadow. Beautifully written, ardent and wise." - Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Secret Chord, People of the Book, and March "Stephanie Saldana's astonishing gifts of perception and potent description make A Country Between feel like the country we would all prefer to live in. These elegant pages, replete with mystery, surprise, secret messages tucked inside every day, and the tender love of parents for one another and for the precious children they nurture and educate in Jerusalem, a most difficult, crucially beloved city, make us homesick for something better." - Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Habibi "A book you can't put down. This is a gift of sweetness and light in a troubled time." - Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of Butterflies and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

STEPHANIE SALDA A received a B.A. from Middlebury College and has won several awards for her poetry. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children, and teaches at the Honors College for Liberal Arts and Sciences, a partnership of Bard College and Al-Quds University. She is the author of The Bread of Angels.

"Behind every dark moment, there is another hidden world. The trick is to hold out long enough to make it there." When American writer Stephanie Saldana finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus Road, the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, she is a new wife trying to navigate a fragile terrain, both within her marriage and throughout the country in which she has chosen to live. Pregnant with her first child, Stephanie struggles to protect her family, their faith, and herself from the cracks of Middle Eastern conflict that threaten to shatter the world around her. But as her due date approaches, she must reconcile herself with her choice to bring a child into a dangerous world. Determined to piece together life from the brokenness, she sets out to uncover small instances of beauty to balance the delicate coexistence between love, motherhood, and a country so often at war. In an urban valley in Jerusalem, A Country Between captures the fragile ecosystem of the Middle East and the difficult first years of motherhood in the midst of a conflict-torn city. What unfolds is a celebration of faith, language, family, and love that fills the space between what was shattered, leaving us whole once more."

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