One of the loveliest things about books is getting to spend time in other characters’ heads: live their lives, have their adventures, loves, and victories. It’s becoming familiar—intimate, really—with someone else through his or her internal life.
This is the magic of stories: Making “other,” “familiar.”
Such is the case in today’s book recommendation: The Treasure of Maria Mamoun, by Michelle Chalfoun. Here’s the summary:
“An island adventure about a girl from the Bronx on a journey of mystery and discovery.”
That’s the careful publisher summary hedging its bets in today’s political climate. Maria is Lebanese-American. English is her first language, and her immigrant mother doesn’t speak Lebanese at home to encourage her American fluency. But her life is full of customs, foods, traditions, and a few expressions stemming from her mother’s Lebanese heritage.
I love this. In a time when Arab-American relations are stretched beyond tension, I love getting to read a book that introduces me to the simple everyday ways of someone with some Arab heritage. It knocks it out of “weird” and “scary” park, into “familiar.” This way of becoming familiar is non-intimidating, and totally cool.
Maria’s adventure happens as she and her mother relocate to Martha’s Vineyard, where her mother takes a position nursing an elderly wealthy man on his estate—an estate with a mystery. Maria meets and interacts with New Englanders of all sorts, including Paolo, a boy from a Brazilian family of fishermen.
This, to me, is one of the great gifts of books: taking the “other” and allowing us to become intimate with it. It’s a terrific way of removing fear and the tension of “strangeness.” It’s armchair traveling at its very best—and its one of the great values of reading.
The Treasure of Maria Mamoun is a dear book, full of courage and multi-generational transformation through open hearts. I give it a high recommendation.
Happy Reading!
P.S. Thanks to any of you who came by to see me at the Gardiner Holiday Fair, or the week before at the Jamestown S’Klallam Arts and Crafts Fair—such a treat to have people stopping who are enthusiastic about my books!