A Saltwater Requiem

About this book

A masterpiece of historical fiction, this commanding portrayal of love, war, and transformation is told through the dissolution of one Syrian family left to the mercy of global and personal events, culminating in their quest to reach the New World on the doomed RMS Titanic Family patriarch Tanios lords over his successful farm as head of the wealthiest family in Saidnaya. Their downfall begins on the day of the extravagant wedding of his eldest son, Elias, to the town beauty, Hind, when Elias is forcibly conscripted by the Ottoman army for the Hijaz Railway project. Clinging to the hope of his son's return, Tanios struggles to keep his fortunes afloat. As the horrors of the Ottoman occupation draw closer and closer to their farm, the family is forced to abandon their beloved homeland, willing to leave everything behind to build a better life. Embarking on this reluctant journey, which will take them first to France and then to England, their tensions, secrets, and agendas bubble up from below the surface. Matriarch Nazira endures her husband's descent into alcoholism while attempting to keep up appearances in the face of the family's waning influence. Unmarried and considered an old maid, eldest daughter Mariam struggles with issues of identity. A secret affair between middle son Emile and one of the loyal servants threatens to explode the already fractured family ties. And youngest son, Joseph, discovers revelatory love with a man in London. Pushed to the brink during years of exile and heartbreak, the family decides to set out for the glittering promise of America. To secure their future, they book passage on the maiden voyage of an unsinkable vessel known as the Titanic. Inspired by the actual passenger manifest for the RMS Titanic and told from multiple points of view, A Saltwater Requiem spans a village in Saidnaya, the docks of Marseilles, the streets of London, and the deck of a doomed ocean liner, blending folklore and intergenerational memory to conjure a moving and universal story, the quest for a place to call home.