Thursday Night Book Club

The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

A story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and an adventurous mapmaker’s apprentice.

As this riveting novel opens, it is the summer of 2011 and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. To be closer to their family, Nour's mother moves her and her 2 sisters from New York City back to her Syrian homeland. Nour tells herself a favorite story—the tale of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to work as a mapmaker's apprentice.

But the Syria Nour’s parents knew is changing, and soon war reaches their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a shell destroys Nour’s house almost taking her life, she and her family are forced to choose between staying and risking more violence or fleeing. They flee taking the same route her mapmaker and his apprentice charted 800 years earlier. The journey which becomes more and more dangerous, until they face a choice that could separate the family forever. 

Following alternating timelines, a pair of unforgettable heroines come of age in perilous times. The Map of Salt and Stars is the story of one girl telling herself the legend of another and learning that if you listen to your own voice, some things can never be lost.

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