THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

Hesh Kestin’s fast paced thriller depicts Hezbollah terrorists instigating a confrontation with Israel’s military. 

Human rights attorney Dahlia Barr spent her life defending Palestinian-Arab terrorists.   Barr, a secular, forty-four year old, divorced mother of two young men, is sporting an affair with a younger man, a journalist from CNN.  After a restructuring of the security offices in Israeli Intelligence, Dahlia Barr is offered the position of decision making regarding recalcitrant terrorists, as to whether the government should or not, employ extreme interrogation.  Barr accepts the offer believing she will be in the position to influence decisions against torture.

The attorney’s first client in her new job is Mohammed Al Masri, a Palestinian living in Canada, tied to terrorism and apprehended in Israel.  Dahlia knows Mohammed from childhood, as they grew up together, his mother and hers, close friends.

Dahlia contends with her mother, an Israel hating Jew who once gifted an Arab woman an impossible dream.

In an ironic twist of fate, after learning her son, Ari, a soldier in the IDF, is kidnapped and tortured by Hezbollah, the devoted liberal attorney, within a nano second, changes her mind about the rights of terrorists.

The short, highly praised, descriptive novel provides insight into Israel’s complicated political, social and geographic constraints.  Hesh Kestin served in the IDF and was a foreign war correspondent for twenty years.