Daughter, Son, Assassin

A story of family bonds amid political betrayal that explores the drastic steps that a young girl will take in order to find a sense of belonging.

Fred is lost, confused, almost certainly about to die. As he traces his steps back from the desert where he has been dropped by soldiers of a repressive Gulf Kingdom regime, his nine-year-old daughter, Nancy, is doing the same from six thousand miles away in a quiet neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington, DC. 

With his disappearance, she and her mother are forced to leave their comfortable house in DC for a new life in Virginia.  Abandoned by their friends and desperate for answers, Nancy and her mother must acclimate to the strange world of suburban anonymity. As Nancy grows into adulthood, she pieces together what happened to her father and devises a bold plan to avenge his disappearance.  

Unraveling an international web of deceit in order to find her father will take time and patience; and becoming a cold-blooded assassin takes commitment to a life at odds with everything she knows. 

Steven Salaita is a scholar and writer based in Egypt. He is the author of nine nonfiction books, most notably Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine, Israel's Dead Soul, and the recently published memoir, An Honest Living. He currently teaches at the American University in Cairo. Daughter, Son, Assassin is his first work of fiction. His essays can be found at stevesalaita.com.