Kirkus Review
Eve (The Family Orchard, 2000) re-creates the exotic, unfamiliar world of Yemens complex Jewish community from the 1920s through its wholesale exodus to Israel in 1949-50 through one young womans eyes.The Damari family lives in Qaraah, a small Northern Yemen village, where their loving but sickly father owns a leather shop. In 1923, the local enforcer of the Orphans Decreean actual law that allowed Muslims to forcibly remove and adopt fatherless Jewish childrenshows particular interest in 5-year-old Adela Damari. Given her fathers precarious health, Adela grows up under a cloud of fear. The only way to avoid adoption is to become betrothed, a common-enough event for children in her culture. Unfortunately, Adelas fiances keep dying, one of several bits of semimagical realism in the novel. Finally, thanks to her tough-minded mothers trickery, Adela finds herself engaged at age 8 to her first cousin Asaf, recently arrived with his spice-merchant father from India. Their childhood romance progresses until Asaf must leave Qaraah with his father. Not yet in puberty, Adela pines for him, but her life changes dramatically in 1930 when another uncle moves to Qaraah with his wife, Rahel, a healer and gifted henna dyerwho knew henna was important in Eastern Jewish culture?and their daughter, Hani. Despite her tradition-bound mothers disapproval and distrust, Adela is immediately drawn to her sophisticated, imaginative and warmhearted relatives. Hani, who teaches her to read, becomes Adelas most trusted friend. Rahel teaches her the art of henna. But happiness shatters in 1933 when drought and illness strike. Adela, now a young woman of 15, flees with Hanis family to British-controlled Aden. Asaf reappears in their lives the next year. Suddenly the novel switches gears: Leisurely, slightly mystical, bittersweet reminiscence gives way to rushed melodrama as betrayal and sexuality mix under the long shadow of World War II.Eve is a natural storyteller; too bad the paint-by-numbers ending undermines her riveting portrait of the lost culture of Yemeni Jews. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.