The book is told chronologically and the dates are vastly important in order to comprehend the extend of what happened in so little time to each of the characters. The characters are concentrated around a young Arab woman, Hanna, and a young Jewish woman, Judith, with every character in the story being connected to either Hanna or Judith. However, it is told from many of the characters POV (not just from Hanna and Judith). I especially enjoyed the different character viewpoints and found the author did a great job describing the Middle Eastern conflict of Jerusalem through many different sets of eyes.
The author shows a variation of answers to the question–Who does Jerusalem belong to?–through these different points of view. It doesn’t singularly revolve around just one or two characters. That is probably the most spectacular thing about this story, is to experience the Middle Eastern conflict from different angles.
This book is filled with a lot of history, but also language and culture. The author incorporates Hebrew, Arabic, and Yiddish words/phrases. Because of this, I recommend reading it on a Kindle so that you can translate quickly.
This is action-packed. So much so, that sometimes certain details were left out that help move the story along. Things such as sensory imagery and directional surroundings. Because there was so much action, things like this were left out quite frequently. It sometimes caused the flow of the story to be broken. There was so much information provided that literary devices were left out. This also caused the first part of the book to be difficult to get through.