Exile

Title: Exile
Author: Richard North Patterson
Publisher: Henry Holt
ISBN: 13: 9780805079470
Genre: Suspense
4 1/4 bolts

A thoughtful tale by talented author Richard North Patterson that offers a look into both sides of the present day terror issue as seen by the people who live it and those who, like most Americans, are removed from it by distance and politics.

Attorney David Wolfe is confronted with a problem that has the power to destroy the life he has built and the future he hopes for when Hana Arif, a love from the past, steps back into his life. She is Palestinian and he is Jewish, she committed to the cause of a homeland and he only to a personal future and success.

They manage to overcome their differences and fall in love, but it is a relationship they both know is going nowhere. She is engaged to a Palestinian and in the end marries him and disappears from David's life. Until the day he gets the call because she is in trouble.

An important Israeli leader has been killed by a suicide bomber and she is suspected of being involved. And David must decide whether to help her or not, a decision that could turn his entire life upside down.

Should he help her? David is tormented by this question over and over because he was also a witness to the explosion that killed the Israeli leader who had been working to bring peace to the Middle East. If David helps Hana, he risks being isolated from all he knows even though she has the right under the law to his help as a lawyer.

I"m pleased to recommend this well told tale to any reader who is open minded enough to look at both sides of an argument and its adherents whose hate keep it alive. This is a book whose characters you won't soon forget. Enjoy. I sure did.