Excerpts

Sunrise over the Golan. The pitch black sky was studded with stars as I crept down the dimly lit paths of Kibbutz Dan on my way to work in the kerem..

I shuddered at the thought of venomous vipers, as snakes were called. But darkness had long since fallen and I could no longer put off finding a place to sleep. The youth hostel was full, my fair weather English friends were sleeping on the beach, and I’d finally given up on finding my road partner…

The Negev Desert was a land of extremes – by day a white-hot griddle; by night a blackened skillet; at dawn a copper pot; at dusk a painted gourd. Its unforgiving rocks and sharp scent reminded me of my early childhood in Texas and Kansas, where the harshness of the land had somehow made me…

I couldn’t resist the beauty of the nocturnal sky as I crept up on deck alone. A shimmering canopy of stars arched over the cobalt sea, falling to the horizon like a fishnet tugged tight by unseen hands. Flying fish played in the ship’s wake, their silvery tails and bellies twisting and flashing in the…

As a young woman my mother had made her own Atlantic crossing to bring my sister and me from England to America. Our parents had met in the midst of World War II, when Dad was an American GI stationed in Britain and Mom was coordinating live entertainment for the Rosy the Riveters, working in…

The Israel that greeted me on that distant, dusty road no longer exists except in memory. Today, parts of the Promised Land have been paved over to such an extent that the life and landscape of the early sixties in this story may sound fantastical. Humming freeways carry a population of nine million between skyscrapers…