Overview

A riveting memoir about one woman's journey into Syria under the Baathist regime and an unexpected love story between two strangers searching for meaning. When StephanieSaldana arrives in Damascus, she is running away from a broken heart and a haunted family history that she has crossed the world to escape. Yet as she moves into a tumbling Ottoman house in the heart of the Old City, she is unprepared for the complex world that awaits her- an ancient capital where Sunni and Shia Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Kurds, and Palestinian and Iraqi refugees share a fragile co-existence. Soon she is stumbling through the Arabic language, fielding interviews from the secret police, and struggling to make the city her own. But as the political climate darkens and the war in neighboring Iraq threatens to spill over, she flees to an ancient Christian monastery carved into the desert cliffs, where she is forced to confront the life she left behind. Soon she will meet a series of improbable teachers- an iconoclastic Italian priest, a famous female Muslim sheikh, a wounded Iraqi refugee, and Frederic, a young French novice monk who becomes her best friend. What follows isa tender story of a womanfalling in love- with God, with her own life, with a country on the brink of chaos, and with a man she knows she can never have. Wise, funny, and heartbreaking,The Bread of Angelscelebrates the hope that appears even in war, the surprising places we can call home, and the possibility of true love.

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9780307280466

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Reviews

From Publishers Weekly: <br>Starred Review: With a family history of untimely death and madness,&#160;Salda&ntilde;a easily took to a career of danger journalism, reporting from risky locales. In a deliberate attempt to stop courting danger,&#160;Salda&ntilde;a attempted a normal life at Harvard Divinity School. When the love affair that had provided her a sense of normalcy ended, she opted to take the Fulbright scholarship she had won to study the Muslim Jesus in Damascus, arriving in Syria in 2004 amid the post-9/11 war in Iraq. The tension of American foreign policy and Salda&ntilde;a&rsquo;s own vivid memories of death and destruction witnessed during her reporting life earlier in the Middle East haunted her, particularly when she embarked upon the Catholic rite of spiritual exercises at the Syrian desert monastery of Mar Musa. In lovely prose and with elements of foreshadowing,&#160;Salda&ntilde;a shares her struggles to become religious again and overcome feelings that God has ab

Author Information

Stephanie Saldana grew up in Texas and received a B. A. from Middlebury College and a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School. She was a Watson and Fulbright scholar and has won several awards for her poetry. She lives in Jerusalem and teaches at the Honors College for Liberal Arts and Sciences, a partnership of Bard College and Al-Quds University.

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