Smitten: Beneath the Layers of the Holy Land

Beneath the layers of politics, religion, and history lies a social life often overlooked. Amidst the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, people continue living their lives beneath the tumultuous surface.

Saba Salim finds herself living with the man she loves. However, the man she chose to be her husband and protector becomes her tormentor. The house she thought would be her sanctuary becomes her personal prison, where she endures physical abuse and constant verbal attacks.

Saba struggles to prove her abuse, facing interrogation by various men. Ultimately, she stands alone, presenting her case to the deciding elders of East Jerusalem.

The walls of Jerusalem feel suffocating, but they expand little by little as Saba gains her freedom. A feminist without realizing it, Saba discovers her strength and identity, breaking free from the chains of her oppressor and becoming her own person.

Double Star

This story is set in Germany at the start of the First World War and follows Klaus, a quiet astronomer of Jewish background, who spends his time with a telescope in an observatory on the edge of town. There he meets an independent young woman from a well-to-do background whose desire for a career of her own leads her to work on the laboratory’s microscope.

Their different backgrounds clash even as the world is changing around them. Ulla is forced to keep her work secret from her socially ambitious mother to whom status and the old ways are prized above all. Her father encourages Ulla to help him in his quest to find a cure for a deadly disease. However, he has a secret of his own which also threatens the stability of their family.

As their relationship grows and Ulla and Klaus share their scientific discoveries, unforeseen events force them to make choices which will have far-reaching consequences for both them and their families.

A Soldier Dies to Live

Have you ever found yourself confronting life and its many important decisions and find yourself living life due to your past decisions? Do you earnestly seek and need a change in your life’s direction? As you come from your vicissitude of despair, suddenly enlightenment dawns upon you. Your pathway becomes clearer and you begin the process of change. As you continue, the change you seek does not appear; but then, you come to your final crossing point, that is, either to descend into darkness or embrace the light or face death. As you face your end, a miraculous savior appears and you realize, “Yes, I want to live.”

In A Soldier Dies to Live, Collins Herrington was such a man who “gave himself the bullet that he didn’t get in the war and found himself lying horizontally across a vertical stream” – his final crossing point. You shall discover whether Collins dies in order to live.