With their kids at day camp, Salim and Tamar Abadi enjoyed a beach day in Tel Aviv. A transistor radio blaring beside them, they first heard the shocking news; Hadas, Salim’s sister, was murdered on the way from Haifa to Tel Aviv. Police investigation determined it was a terrorist attack. But Tamar, Salim’s wife, knew Hadas did not go to Haifa. Tamar knew the gunman who killed her sister-in-law then shot himself. Tamar kept their secret affair for 15 years. Haunted by Hadas’ death, years later, an ocean away from Israel, Tamar continued to worry their daughter’s life would also culminate in tragedy.

Exiled from Arab countries after the 1948 war, the Israeli government resettled Mizrahi Jews, Salim and Hadas, in Kefr Ma’an, an abandoned village near Tel Aviv where they resided for ten years. Hadas and Salim met Tamar when the three teenagers volunteered at Kibbutz Ein Gev. Hadas and Tamar became inseparable. Hadas made a “shiduch” between Tamar and her handsome brother Salim. Though Tamar’s Ashkenazi mother warned her about marrying an “arabisher yid” (Arab/Jew) at seventeen Tamar and Salim wed. Soon after Hadas married Moti. They had two adorable kids, Tehila and Barak. Tamar and Salim had three kids, Ari, Rachel and Ruby. Shortly after the 1967 War both couples relocated to Tel Aviv raising their kids together.

Hadas, however, had another life, outside her marriage. Each week she would travel to Kefr Ma’an. There she met poet Daoud Hamid, her Palestinian lover. Tamar was a buffer between their rendezvous and their ultimate plans to run away together. Daoud bought tickets for France where they would be more accepted. But Hadas backed away. She couldn’t leave her children “until the world intruded.”

In shock inconsolable with grief after his sister’s murder, Salim relocated his family from Israel to safer shores in America. Salim promised to return to Israel after five years …a rich man.

Feeling alone, lonely in New York, Tamar yearned to return “home”. She worried about the children’s diminishing Jewish identity inside the American “sausage factory” culture. When the Mahmoudis from Jaffa moved upstairs everything brightened. Salim was overjoyed. The family spoke Arabic, Salim’s mother tongue. Young son Faisal Mahmoudi was a sweet boy, an artist, Hussien a university student. Faisal was the same age as Ruby, Tamar’s eldest. Tamar and Radwa Mahmoudi exchanged tabbouleh recipes. But the deepening friendship between Faisal and Ruby “dredged up old anxieties” about Hadas. Tamar pleaded with Salim to end the relationship. Salim refused to interfere. Tamar took it upon herself to stop the friendship. It didn’t go well.

An all-night read ( ‘cuz you won’t be able to put it down) author Zeeva Bukai hits it out of the park with her debut novel, The Anatomy of Exile, a deeply moving saga that speaks to the meaning of home and identity.