Waking Lions: The Complexity of Our Choices

While driving in the desert at night, distracted by the most beautiful moon he has ever seen, Dr. Eitan Green hits a man. A brain surgeon, he knows the man will not live. He makes the decision to drive on, leaving the dying man. He won't risk his career by reporting the accident.

He does not know he left behind a clue or that the dying man's wife Sirkit witnessed the accident. She blackmails the doctor: he will spend his nights at a makeshift clinic caring for her fellow Eritrean refugees.

A man who prefers to live in order, who shuns the blood and shit of human frailty, the doctor is thrust into the dirty, ugly side of life. But as he works with the tall, proud woman, he comes to admire her skill and to secretly lust for her.

Dr. Green's wife is a detective on the case of the hit-and-run victim. She struggles with her husband's absence, sure he is not cheating on her, yet sensing something is not right.

Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, beautifully translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston, is a remarkable novel that probes the complexity of our moral choices. People do bad things or good things, for bad reasons or good ones, culminating in earned or unearned outcomes. It is about power shifts, the prejudice between Israelis, Bedouins, and African Eritreans, the refugee experience, the mystery of never really knowing one another, and how the privileged class can turn away from the uncomfortable and live in a sterile world of their own making.

The story is told by an omniscient narrator who knows the thoughts of the characters, without dialogue. Twists create an unexpectedly propulsive, action plot line. It is a memorable novel.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Waking Lions
Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Little, Brown, and Company
$9.99 paperback
ISBN: 9780316395403

The Power Of Music in a Hard Land: Children of the Stone by Sandy Tolan

When I was eight years old my grandmother bought me a piano and mom enrolled me in piano lessons. I used to think that if anyone where to break into the house with hostile intent, some monster from the movies, all I needed to do was sit and play music and it would calm and subdue the monster. Perhaps this is not true literally, but today research is showing that music education has therapeutic value, relieving stress, releasing emotions, improving mood and resolving conflicts. I knew that as a teen when playing classical music gave order and discipline and romantic music allowed expression and release. Instrumental music further, like the choral singing I participated in since Third Grade, has an added benefit of being part of a team, achieving something beautiful together. Add the benefits of discipline and the neuron growth of the brain, music education today is known to be as important as other knowledge skills.

Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land by Sandy Tolan is a novelized account of Ramzi Aburedwan, a Palestinian boy of the Ramallah refugee camp. At eight years old Ramzi was photographed with stones in his hands, participating in the first Intifada when Palestinian boys began throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers occupying their country. 

Ramzi discovered music and the viola. Music gave him a voice and a new way of protesting his political reality. He won a scholarship to study in France for three years. He started a traveling musical group. He returned to Ramallah to found a music school for children among his own people. 

Ramzi joined the East West Divan orchestra organized by Argentinian-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian American academic Edward Said. It is composed of 40 Israelis, 40 Palestinians and 20 Spaniards as an example of peaceful coexistence. The Divan orchestra elected to be apolitical and eventually Ramzi left the orchestra believing their ideals were false to reality.

Music is wielded by Ramzi as a sword--first to slay the oppression and depression felt by the refugee camp children. Tolan relates the stories of the kids whose lives are transformed by their instruments. Prodigies are discovered in the rubble. Music offers them a respite, a slice of beauty, a feeling of control and self esteem. 

Ramzi's story is told against the shifting political landscape of his time. It is a hard story to read. The centuries of persecution faced by Jews across the world is not to be discounted, but the apartheid and persecution the Palestinians have suffered under Israel is atrocious. 

Tolan does not idealize Ramzi. He has a remarkable and relentless drive to achieve. He is also a wounded man, a private man, an idealist whose high expectations can be hard for his students. 

The book was five years in the writing, drawing on interviews and accounts. Tolan's journalistic approach does not mean the reader avoids feeling drawn to side with the Palestinians. Merely offering facts and numbers of those killed, hurt, or imprisoned bring an awareness that those who have suffered most are the women and children of Palestine, and the refugees of sixty years. The story is open ended. Ramzi carries on his mission and Israeli-Palestinian relations have reached no peaceful accord. Sometimes all we can do is change the world one person at a time. And that is whay Ramzi has been doing.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley for a fair and unbiased review.

Children of the Stone
by Sandy Tolan
Bloomsbury USA
Publication April 21, 2015
$28.00 hardcover
ISBN:9781608198139