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nonfiction

How To Understand Israel in 60 days or Less, by Sarah Glidden, $24.99 When Sarah Glidden embarks on a trip to Israel, she expects to return with a crystal-clear understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — without becoming “a brainwashed, raging Zionist.”

Throughout her whirlwind tour with Birthright, a program that takes young Jews on free trips to Israel, she’s constantly concerned with countering any pro-Israel propaganda and getting an objective view of the country and its politics. But she quickly learns that nothing is black and white in the Holy Land.

In her travel-memoir-as-graphic book, “How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less,” Glidden addresses the nuances and complexities of Israel’s past and present through humor and history lessons in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and beyond.

She manages to make a familiar journey fresh in this graphic format; her illustrations clearly resemble the real-life terrain. Balancing seriousness with sarcasm, she captures the idiosyncrasies of Israeli culture and ponders the difficult questions of how Israel might pursue a peaceful and secure future.

Any account from the tour bus — or the camel’s hump — has its limits. Glidden tries hard to uncover the real Israel beyond the holy sites and nationalist narratives, but time, security constraints and the scripted nature of an organized trip rein in her lofty goals.

As she leaves the Middle East with more questions than answers, her quest for a deeper understanding is clearly just beginning.

fiction

Dark Water, by Laura McNeal, $16.99 As someone in a mixed-race marriage, I confess to wincing at the book-jacket description of the “forbidden romance” between Pearl DeWitt, 15, the niece of a California avocado rancher, and Amiel de la Cruz Guerrero, 17, an illegal migrant worker hired by Pearl’s uncle.

Oh, no, I thought, not another earnest exploration of how young love tries to conquer all — stern parents, taunting peers, societal strictures — and ends tragically. Why do mixed-race romances in young adult fiction always end like this — as opposed to, more frequently these days, real life’s happier unions?

Thankfully, “Dark Water,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award earlier this month, is a much more nuanced portrayal of such a relationship than the book jacket would suggest.

The novel opens with Pearl, as the first-person narrator, reflecting on events leading up to a devastating wildfire. The child of a recent bitter divorce, she recalls her initial attraction to gentle Amiel. She discovers his pieced-together home in the dry woods, and despite (or perhaps because of) the language barrier, she connects deeply with him. When the wildfire sweeps through, Pearl makes a series of choices that will forever impact her family and Amiel. She loses much, including a vivid landscape lush with “blood oranges and Meyer lemons and sweet limes.”

Although Amiel sometimes seems less a fully realized character than a projection of Pearl’s loneliness and need, the particular strength of this haunting story is Pearl’s motivation to tell it. She seeks not to excuse but to understand and take responsibility for her actions.