The Occupation of Zaima - Hardcover

Georgeann Packard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1579625282 ISBN 13: 9781579625283

Publisher: Permanent Press, 2018

Synopsis

For Zaima al-Aziz, her poetry is the most direct expression of her anger and pain. It pours out from her in sharp, clear language, more like expulsion than expression. She is an Iraqi American who has just returned to Michigan from the chaos that is the Iraq War. Now she finds that neither the country of her birth nor the country of her parents is home. Contrast that with the narrative following Theodore Dash, a young man returning to his boyhood summer paradise in northern Michigan from a Franciscan seminary. His grandfather has died and his will challenges Theodore to choose between the life of the cloth and one of the soil. He seems the personification of good intent and selflessness, but there is a dark side to his soul, which he cannot evade. Zaima has a pressing reason to travel to that same small northern village and away from her family in Dearborn. Her life will collide with Theodore's in dramatic and unpredictable ways as they both struggle to unravel who they are and why they are bound so uncomfortably together.

About this title

About the Author:

GEORGEANN PACKARD is a fiction writer, graphic designer, and landscape photographer. She also designs and installs gardens on Long Island's North Fork.

Her first novel, Fall Asleep Forgetting, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2010 in two categories. Kirkus hailed her second book, Paint the Bird, as "brilliantly imagined and rendered."

Review:

Relationships as fragile as apple blossom grow from hearts as wounded as the small cramped fruit of an untended tree, needing space to mend, in this tale of lands and cultures separated by history and bound by inability to heal. The story is beautifully told and deeply rooted in the orchards of Empire, Michigan. The language is couched in the complex points of view of disparate characters and the heart-rending poetry of a warrior's soul. Together with senses, growth and seasons, it all combines to make one truly beautiful novel that holds you tight and won't let go. Nobody's perfect in this tale some are maybe more imperfect than others, while many hide past sins and love all painted a different shade. Nobody's evil, though there are deep mistakes behind each of us. Nobody's totally true or totally false to themselves or to those they love. But two wounded protagonists Christian man and Muslim woman struggle through it all to find a sense of self, of a self worth believing in. With much to heal and much to learn; with seasons of growth and nurture and harvest to come; with occupier maybe occupied, and landowner only leasing what belongs to the land itself; the place called Empire has a tale to tell, and these are its characters. I love the poems and the poetry of this novel. I love the deep sense that these people are real (at least, real to me). I love the parts where I can relate and the parts where I can learn. And I love the seasons of the soul. The Occupation of Zaima tells an unpredictably beautiful tale, well-nurtured, splashed with coincidence's cruel caprice like rainstorms in spring, and filled with the scents that cross cultures, the beauty of nature, and the sideways remembrance of heaven. It's a truly haunting, captivating, sensual and powerful read. --Sheila's Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Permanent Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1579625282
• ISBN 13: 9781579625283
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272