num_pages: 312
description: On the eve of her daughter Alias wedding Salma reads the girls future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967. Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alias brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he cant escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990 Alia and her family once again lose their home their land and their story as they know it scattering to Beirut Paris Boston and beyond. Soon Alias children begin families of their own once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities. Lyrical and heartbreaking Salt Houses is a remarkable debut novel that challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understandone that asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you cant go home again. 
language: English
title: Salt Houses
publisher: Harper