BETWEEN TWO DESERTS

Modern-day Jerusalem may seem an unlikely setting for romance—especially between a Muslim man and Jewish woman—but many improbable liaisons blossom in this promising first novel. The protagonist, Eve Cavell, is an American whose blundering presence in Jerusalem is deftly woven into a plot with many separate intrigues. Eve travels to Israel to fulfill the dying wish of her grandfather, but she initially has no interest in the region's complex political landscape, despite her Jewish heritage. From the moment she arrives, Eve's ignorance of the land's social customs wins her the wrong sort of attention from Israeli authorities. First, she rents a room in the forbidden Arab quarter and, as if to draw even more scrutiny, she takes a young Palestinian man, Salim, as her lover. Eve's situation is further complicated when she gets involved with a woman who runs an orphanage with connections to the PLO. Shames, a former Middle East correspondent, handles the complexities of Eve's visit to war-torn Jerusalem with a subtlety seldom seen in this genre. She is careful not to pass judgment on either side of the political equation as she skillfully intertwines the lives of this diverse cast of characters to produce a tightly executed, emotion-filled work. Shames avoids the temptation of offering trite reflections on the region's ongoing conflict and shuns the sort of moralizing that might have marred her sensual prose, making this streamlined debut a timely book of modest beauty. (Aug. 9)