Alicia Erian: 2 books

Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. In "Alcatraz," we meet a middle-school spelling champion who spends her afternoons taking baths with the boy next door. In "Almonds and...

It is August 1990. Saddam Hussein has just invaded Kuwait, and Jasira's mother has bought her daughter a one-way ticket to Texas to live with her strict Lebanese father. Living in a neat model home in Charming Gates, just outside of Houston, Jasira struggles with her father's rigid lifestyle and the...