She urges Isra to do the same, but Isra is paralyzed by fear and doubt, and she cannot summon the courage to defy her husband or her culture. She is rebellious and fights the cultural expectations placed on her. Isra’s only ally in the house is Sarah, Fareeda and Khaled’s teenage daughter. Isra tries to shield her daughters from Adam’s behavior, but the stress weighs on her, and she withdraws from everyone around her, including her children. With each new daughter, Adam grows increasingly abusive, frequently coming home drunk and beating Isra.
When Isra bears only girls, Fareeda grieves for the lack of a grandson, heaping shame on her daughter-in-law in the process. He must work to help support the family, and her job is to raise the children. When Isra becomes pregnant, she hopes the new baby will bring her and Adam closer together, but he dismisses the notion immediately. Fareeda is overbearing, and Adam is rarely there, working at his family’s multiple businesses for up to 18 hours a day. Isra finds her new life tedious and depressing. It’s a rude awakening for Isra, but, as Fareeda reminds her constantly, this is the way of life for women. Her destiny is household chores, bearing children (ideally boys), and enduring the occasional beating. She believes in marrying for love, but she soon discovers that her culture has a far more utilitarian view of marriage. Isra, who has grown up with a love of reading-for which her father beat her-is naïve about life.
She now belongs to his family, and she is shipped off to America to start her new life with Adam and his parents, Khaled and Fareeda. According to Arabic tradition, Isra is married off by her parents to Adam, a Palestinian American living in New York.
Switching between past and present, the novel tells the intergenerational story of Isra, a Palestinian immigrant living in Brooklyn, and her daughter Deya, growing up in the same house 18 years later.
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