When her husband leaves her for a younger woman, Rose Franklin buys a camper and sets off -- away from her heartache and anger. She finds herself spending a couple of days in Shady Grove, a camp site along the Mississippi River in West Memphis, Arkansas. While there, a respected and well-liked man in the community seems to commit suicide for no apparent reason. Could it somehow be connected to the ancient slave burial ground that he was researching? As Rose comes to know the characters of this small community she begins to unravel the mystery of why a man loses his faith and the consequences of his loss.Praise In Down by the Riverside Jackie Lynn's lyrical prose creates a richly diverse cast of characters brought by fate or chance to the Shady Grove Campground on the banks of the timeless Mississippi River (almost a character in itself). Lynn's writing touches the everyday with a golden glow, turning the simplest moments into profound truths. Love, death, healing, redemption, and the deep transcendent connections that can grow between strangers are at the heart of this gentle mystery. -- Vicki Lane, author of Signs in the Blood Down By The Riverside is a lyrical mystery that rolls along much like the great Mississippi River it portrays. Sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, always the currents below the surface hide far more than they reveal. With beautifully crafted prose, Jackie Lynn weaves a tale of outcasts living along a riverbank, who while seeking the truth about a drowning, ultimately find both love and redemption. It's a novel that lingers; I found myself not only wondering further about the characters, but also thinking how nice it would be to plan a trip to Memphis and visit that fabled river. -- Sallie Bissell , author of In the Forest of Harm Views: 28
In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR's *Fresh Air* in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.
### From Publishers Weekly
*Starred Review.* The title of this moving, well-crafted book refers to a tree in the backyard of a home in Ramla, Israel. The home is currently owned by Dalia, a Jewish woman whose family of Holocaust survivors emigrated from Bulgaria. But before Israel gained its independence in 1948, the house was owned by the Palestinian family of Bashir, who meets Dalia when he returns to see his family home after the Six-Day War of 1967. Journalist Tolan (*Me & Hank*) traces the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the parallel personal histories of Dalia and Bashir and their families—all refugees seeking a home. As Tolan takes the story forward, Dalia struggles with her Israeli identity, and Bashir struggles with decades in Israeli prisons for suspected terrorist activities. Those looking for even a symbolic magical solution to that conflict won't find it here: the lemon tree dies in 1998, just as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process stagnates. But as they follow Dalia and Bashir's difficult friendship, readers will experience one of the world's most stubborn conflicts firsthand. 2 maps. *(May)* Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
### From Booklist
*Starred Review* To see in human scale the tragic collision of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Tolan focuses on one small stone house in Ramla--once an Arab community but now Jewish. Built in 1936 by an Arab family but acquired by a Jewish family after the Israelis captured the city in 1948, this simple stone house has anchored for decades the hopes of both its displaced former owners and its new Jewish occupants. With remarkable sensitivity to both families' grievances, Tolan chronicles the unlikely chain of events that in 1967 brought a long-dispossessed Palestinian son to the threshold of his former home, where he unexpectedly finds himself being welcomed by the daughter of Bulgarian Jewish immigrants. Though that visit exposes bitterly opposed interpretations of the past, it opens a real--albeit painful--dialogue about possibilities for the future. As he establishes the context for that dialogue, Tolan frankly details the interethnic hostilities that have scarred both families. Yet he also allows readers to see the courage of families sincerely trying to understand their enemy. Only such courage has made possible the surprising conversion of the contested stone house into a kindergarten for Arab children and a center for Jewish-Arab coexistence. What has been achieved in one small stone building remains fragile in a land where peacemaking looks increasingly futile. But Tolan opens the prospect of a new beginning in a concluding account of how Jewish and Arab children have together planted seeds salvaged from one desiccated lemon tree planted long ago behind one stone house. A much-needed antidote to the cynicism of realpolitik. *Bryce Christensen* *Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved* Views: 28
A failed attempt on his life by a contract killer gets Mike Hammer riled up. But it also lands him an unlikely job: security detail for a Hollywood producer having a party to honor his beautiful fiancée, a rising Broadway star. But it's no walk in the park, as Hammer finds violence following him and his beautiful P.I. partner Velda into the swankiest of crime scenes.In the meantime, Hammer is trying to figure out who put the hitman on him. Is there a connection with the death of a newsstand operator who took a bullet meant for him? A shadowy figure looking for the kill of his life? Views: 28
Liam is orphaned and alone, on the run from vicious killers. Views: 28
When her son is in trouble, a heartbroken mother finds the courage and faith to save him, in ReShonda Tate Billingsley’s powerful family drama—a novel as timely as today’s headlines.The breaking TV news rocks Jasper, Texas, to the core: a white police officer is fatally shot in a scuffle with three black youths—and a cellphone video captures Jamal Jones, the sixteen-year-old son of esteemed Reverend Elton Jones, escalating the tragic encounter. Now, as the national spotlight shines on a town already rife with racial tension, Jamal is a murder suspect on the run. And all of Jasper—even the Reverend’s congregation—rushes to judge the boy they thought they knew. But Gloria Jones knows her son best, and she races to find Jamal before the law does—to the outrage of her workaholic husband. Once she finds him, she has to decide whether to turn him in or help him run. With ruthless prosecutor and Houston mayoral candidate Kay... Views: 28
At thirty-five, Jane realises something rather disturbing. She thought she had her life perfectly balanced: working from home as a a freelance translator allows her to keep her financial independence, spend time with her daughter and escape office politics. But somehow, instead of combining a rewarding career with a satisfying mother-daughter relationship, she's become an all-purpose dogsbody, rushing from crisis to crisis and combining missing deadlines with repairing the dishwasher. Rupert is also leading the life he planned: a job in the city, glamorous girlfriend, plenty of money. But he's beginning to have doubts about the dull-but-sensible route he's chosen -- and to realise it's just possible he wants more out of life. So when he and Jane meet, each escaping their day-to-day life with a stolen afternoon in the peace of the cinema, they both start to wonder whether it's really enough to settle for the next best thing ... Views: 28
Even within the vampire brotherhood, Zsadist is feared. Still bearing the scars from a tortured past, he is renowned for his unquenchable fury. Anger is his only companion, and terror is his only passion-until he rescues a beautiful female from the evil Lessening Society. Views: 28
