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Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
A straight-ahead story of human passion—desire, conviction, and the guilt of a survivor—struggling for order within the frayed justice of the Middle East conflict.
Caddie Blair feels everything strongly—and so she works hard to keep her
distance. It's the ethical thing for a journalist to do, especially in a
war-torn region like the Middle East. And Caddie wants to believe that nothing
is as important as covering "the story."
There's room for passion in her life—but that's only physical. And Caddie
keeps even those fleeting attachments under wraps, secretive, because she knows
that when a journalist even appears to lose her detachment, she is already lost.
So what is Caddie to feel when her lover dies beside her—shot in an ambush
on the way to the next promising political interview, across the Israeli border
into Lebanon?
An authentic look at the emotional and ethical chaos within a war
correspondent who becomes a bit too involved, Masha Hamilton's The Distance
Between Us is a straight-ahead story of human passion—desire, conviction, and
the guilt of a survivor—struggling for order within the frayed justice of the
Middle East conflict.
A seasoned journalist herself, Masha Hamilton brings to this revealing novel
the sharp eye and deep empathy that marked her debut, Staircase of a Thousand
Steps (BlueHen, 2001). Beautifully turned, and peopled with an astounding cast
of characters who are as true as they are perceptive, The Distance Between Us is
finally the portrait of one woman's search for the narrow pass between vengeance
and emotional survival, when her only true attachment has been torn away from
her.
"If we knew where we were going to fall," the novel's most
enigmatic character tells her, "we could spread straw."
Gayle Brandeis, author of The Book of Dead Birds
What a powerful, intense, beautifully written story. Masha Hamilton takes us
right into the brutal heart of the war zone, right into the guarded heart of
journalist Caddie Blair. With spare and stunning prose, Hamilton reminds us that
the distance between us often isn't as great as we may think.Hamilton dedicates her book to
Kevin
Carter, the Pulitzer-winning photograph particularly known for the
photograph that personified the Sudanese famine - a tiny girl
squatting on scrawny knees, head drooping heavily with a vulture lurking
behind. Two months after collecting his award Carter attached
a garden hose to his exhaust pipe and gassed himself. The note
beside him on the passenger seat read 'The pain of life overrides the
joy to the point that joy does not exist'.
For a summarized history of the region try these links, each covers broadly the same events, but each with their own
subtle differences in interpretation.
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