A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide

In this memoir, Saldaña meets monk Frederic in a monastery in Syria, and they fall in love. This sounds like the story's happy ending (for more on this, read the author's Bread and Angels), but instead, this is where Saldaña's narrative starts. She and Frederic, now a former monk, marry in France yet seek a place to live where they both feel at home. Both are deeply spiritual and profoundly religious, and they decide that the holy city of Jerusalem should be their first dwelling together. They rent a rambling house on Nablus Road from Franciscan nuns, on the Palestinian side of the city. Nablus Road is a colorful and vibrant place, and it is here that they raise their young children. However, on the edge of East and West Jerusalem, Saldaña and her growing family watch as checkpoints spring up in front of their house, altering the neighborhood's way of life. Even though they ultimately move to a different house, they remain in Jerusalem, a testament to the couple's full embrace of peace and a commitment to living the lives they chose together.