Fourteen-year-old Netta Hofman wakes one morning to find that her older brother did not come home the night before. Having just moved from Israel to Los Angeles, the family of seventeen-year-old Adam is stunned and baffled by his disappearance. Adam has not had time to make many friends yet, and he has always been responsible, the last person who would leave home without a word.
Netta and her parents desperately seek answers to Adam's disappearance. Could he have run away with a girl he met on-line? Was he abducted for ransom? Or, is it possible that Palestinian terrorism is to blame -- revenge for his Israeli father's work?
When Netta makes a new and unlikely friend at school, an Arab boy named Laith, she begins addressing issues of prejudice -- her classmates prejudice against foreign students, her own prejudice against Palestinians, and her family's growing suspicion that Palestinian hatred of Israelis is behind Adam's disappearance.
In this thoughtful and suspenseful book, Gloria Miklowitz explores issues of Middle Eastern relationships through the eyes of young people on both sides of the age-old conflict. The surprising conclusion to the novel will leave readers with a renewed understanding of other people's needs, fears, and beliefs.
