Revealing and poignant, Crossing the Line is the true story of a pair of star-crossed lovers—Mya, an American-Israeli immigrant woman, and Mohamed, the son of a Palestine Liberation Organization member who was deported by the Israelis from the West Bank in the 1970s. With a reporter’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s knack for nuance, Crossing the Line is a human story that portrays a psychologically complex couple bucking convention and breaking the greatest taboo on both sides–loving one’s “enemy.” This compelling memoir is also a tortured love letter to the land and the two peoples that, paradoxically, both nurtured Mya and Mohamed’s relationship while simultaneously casting them out.
What People are Saying
“There are countless ways to talk about Israel and Palestine but few as moving and engrossing as this memoir. Crossing the Line is wonderful.”
— Junot Diaz, MacArthur Fellow & Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
— Junot Diaz, MacArthur Fellow & Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“A remarkable story, beautifully told, which shows that love can transgress even the most brutal political divides.”
— Peter Beinart, author, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
— Peter Beinart, author, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
“This brave and beautifully rendered memoir—narrated at the sharp edge where the political meets the personal—reckons not only with a country’s borders but with the shadow lines within the self. Guarnieri writes with the lyric precision of one who has learned to translate survival into song.”
— Benjamin Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial, winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and Jerusalem: City of the Book
— Benjamin Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial, winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and Jerusalem: City of the Book
“Crossing the Line is a genuinely singular and essential book. It is a love story unlike any other I have ever read. And it is a portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy unlike any other I have ever read. In both ways, Mya Guarnieri has written with both lyrical compassion and unrelenting, unflinching moral integrity.” — Samuel Freedman, author of Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry, winner of the National Jewish Book Award