After a lifetime working as a professor of Arabic literature and a translator of contemporary Arab authors into English, Issa J. Boullata now regales his readers with a rich medley of tales that will continue to resonate long after the book is put down. His characters are mainly migrants to Canada and the USA from Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria, starting their lives again, dealing with their memories, with pasts that cannot be recalled, with exile, with just being immigrants. The stories question how they have lived their lives. How did they settle into a new life? What happened to all the old relationships? How did they go about making new ones? Was it possible still to love? To fall in love again? Did they find happiness in their new country? Plus an essay by the author on the literary influences and his relationship to the world of books, entitled "Books and I".