"He went to school to learn how to kill me. The Israeli girl who ruined his life. Seven people were killed instead. A single mother of two. A computer programmer. Two college students. A grandmother and her four-year-old grandson sharing an ice cream. And Dov, my boyfriend, my heart, the man I wanted to marry, who was there waiting for me." Maya leaves Israel to study astronomy at the University of Virginia, running from the violence, guilt, and memories of her past. As the narrative switches between Virginia and Israel, we learn about Maya's life as a soldier, her ambiguous devotion to Israel, and her love for her boyfriend, Dov, who is tragically killed in a suicide bombing. Now, in Virginia, amid the day-to-day pressures of classes, roommates, and fraternity parties, Maya attempts to reconcile her Israeli past with her American future. "From the Hardcover edition." Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr 9 Up Haunted by the death of her boyfriend, a victim in a suicide bombing for which she feels responsible, Maya Laor struggles through her first year of astronomy studies at the University of Virginia. She misses Israel and her family and desperately tries to avoid connecting with anyone, including the handsome TA, Justin Case, who is working hard to get to know her. In chapters alternating between the Virginia present and her Israeli past, 20-year-old Maya tells her own story. She marvels at the unconscious privilege and seemingly unfounded fears of her college classmates, and remembers the excitement of her military service and her first love affair. These two cultures are light years apart. When her habit of running alone leads to a broken ankle, she realizes that she has made good friends who care about her and whom she cares about. This well-paced first novel, a moving study of grief and recovery, is also a love story that should appeal particularly to students interested in other ways of seeing the world and looking forward to their own college lives. Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr. 8-12. Maya, 20, blames herself for the death of her boyfriend, who is killed by a suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Haunted by grief and guilt, she leaves Israel for college in the U.S., but although she makes friends, studies, and even begins to fall in love and have sex again, she can't forget. The first-person narrative moves eloquently back and forth between Maya's American present and her Israeli past: growing up in Israel, serving in the army, working in a Tel Aviv office, falling in love, and finally, losing someone in a shocking bombing. Most characters in this novel, one of the first about a contemporary Israeli young woman in a high-tech, secular world, are drawn with some complexity. Maya's healing seems a little preachy, but there's depth to her character: she's needy and angry, sarcastic and warm. She also loves her country, yet she doesn't talk politics. Though she considers the Palestinians as those people over the border ( They hated us ), she doesn't always focus on herself as living in a war-torn place. Of course, one book isn't enough to tell the whole story of the Middle East, so recommend this with books listed in the accompanying Read-alikes column, which speak from the diverse viewpoints of young Arabs and Jews caught up in the violence. HazelRochman. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.