Finding Melody Sullivan
MELODY SULLIVAN is a snarky half-Jewish, half-Catholic, 16-year-old reeling from the death of her mother. She pours her grief into poetry and an intense relationship with her powerhouse best friend, Palestinian-American YASMINA KHDOUR. When Melody’s father drags her to an overseas archeology conference in Jerusalem, she is left to wander the city and negotiate Israeli cousins. Her only other source of solace is her Vermont classmate, AARON SHAPIRO, a shy, religious boy with an awkward crush on her. Aaron’s anxious texts make it clear he believes she’s wandering into enemy territory.
Yasmina’s also visiting her family in the nearby city of Hebron—but given the ideological divisions between Israel and Palestine, Melody’s BFF might as well be thousands of miles away. On top of everything else, she’s horrified to discover her dad’s reunited with an old flame during their trip. Her mom might be gone, but in Melody’s mind, it’s still a betrayal.
This is a story about trauma and taking emotional risks, about facing internal demons and the external realities of war and occupation, about finding oneself in the most unexpected places.
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Book review - April 2024
Linda Dittmar's review of Finding Melody Sullivan was posted on the website: Social Justice Books, a Teaching for Change Project.
“Especially now, when support for Palestinians is being cast as anti-Semitism, it takes courage to write a YA novel about a U.S. teenager’s journey into Israel’s Occupied Territories of Palestine, and yet this is what Alice Rothchild does in Finding Melody Sullivan.”
Duncan Lyon
“A beautifully told story of a 16-year-old from Vermont inspecting the scraps of her messy life. The death of Melody's mother leaves a sense of loss that feels dragged deeply into her body, with everyone seeming content but her. The book builds up in a slow, hypnotic rhythm as we meet her circle of friends as each embarks on a journey of their own.
With a father unable to bridge the distance between them, adrift in his grief and on his own mission, she is persuaded to travel to Israel on a trip that had always been planned and finds herself left to her own devices, succumbing to relentless waves of fear and loneliness that roll over and pull like the tide on a quiet, windless evening.
She ventures out amongst sonorous calls to prayer, ringing church bells, rocking and praying in a place where ancient history matters, in the shade of thousand year old olive and almond trees, stepping over byzantine stones, amongst scents of basil and thyme, geraniums and bougainvillea, cardoman and cinnamon, apple flavoured tobacco.
Amidst the the calm natural beauty of it all, Hebron becomes her destination and pulses quicken as we encounter military interference, decisions and whims both angry and reckless as boy and girl soldiers exert power over adult lives. The author captures images of refugee camps, blindfolded children, tear gas attacks, rooftop tanks of fresh water but there is a sweetness also.
In this story, interactions that are often perceived as extremely unwise and complicated are beautifully observed and, each character is easily recognisable with descriptions that live and breathe quite simply together and reveal themselves to be entirely natural and honest.”
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In this sensitively told story, Rothchild weaves a tale of overcoming grief and discovery during a crucial time in her young protagonist's life. Rothchild gracefully moves through this young girl's profound pain, layering her storytelling with her fragile character's struggles as she reconciles her loss and uncovers the truth about family, friendship, and the broader conflict in the world she encounters. The young characters in her story have something to teach us.
Paul Zarou
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Through Melody Sullivan’s journey to unearth her roots and to define her priorities in life, Alice Rothchild tells an intimate story of friendship and self-discovery, in which she debunks many myths related to the struggle Palestine and the origins of Israel. This coming-of-age novel is an important read to understand the complexities of an ancient homeland and its people.
Ramzy Baroud
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Finding Melody Sullivan reminds us that young people have within them the wisdom, instincts and desire to connect and heal across difference in ways that grownups can’t figure out. By crossing borders against the grain, hateful tropes are upended to be sources of empowerment. This book reminds us that cross-religion relationships allow us deeper access to ourselves and each other--a timely reminder for a generation saddled with tikkun olam, repairing our broken world.
Rabbi Alissa Wise
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In Finding Melody Sullivan, Alice Rothchild draws on her experiences as a feminist doctor and as an activist in the struggle for justice in Palestine to write a novel which, while nominally young adult literature, could equally well be read by not so young adults. Her protagonist, Melody Sullivan, the possibly atheist child of a Jewish mother who has recently died of cancer, is adrift in profound grief, teenage angst, and a budding sense of sexual arousal. She lives in bucolic Vermont, dissatisfied with her father, whose own grief clashes with hers, finding understanding from a Palestinian American best friend, Yasmina, and feeling simultaneously repelled and attracted to a prospective boyfriend, Aaron, from a virulently Zionist family. The easy Vermont friendship and community among them shifts as Melody and Yasmina visit their respective families in Israel and Palestine, with Aaron participating via texting. Can characters this young rise to the level of maturity, insight, empathy that life in Israel and Palestine demand of them? Can they remain true to the people they aspired to being back home in Vermont? The narrative arc on the novel is a voyage of discovery for Melody – discovery of self beyond the grief that continually threatens to smother her, discovery of the world, discovery of her own voice, discovery of her own ability to trust others after a devastating loss. Rothchild has an uncanny ability to honor clashing voices and values – she is pitch perfect in capturing adolescent moodiness and snark, the fear-mongering that drives Zionist militancy, the real-time agony that corrodes the life of Palestinians living under Occupation. Lest this all sound like a novel too heavy to read, the story is told with the humor, sometimes just witty, sometimes sly, that teenagers bring to the conversation. It is, above all, a novel about the courage we must find in ourselves to keep hope alive in the impossible world we have inherited. I hope to meet Melody, Yasmina and Aaron again in a few years.
Eve Spangler, author of Understanding Israel/Palestine: Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict, Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston College
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The colors that Alice Rothchild uses to illustrate the various strands of life in Palestine/Israel are reminders of a stunning piece of Palestinian embroidery. Her intersections of life in Palestine/Israel are clear and vibrant. Through the relationships and experiences of three young people, she brilliantly illustrates the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, revealing to us the humanity behind the politics. It takes the deep understanding of someone who is sensitive towards all the players in that conflict, to write such a touching story that would resonate with the younger generation – and possibly stimulate their questions. As a Palestinian and an educator, I would strongly recommend it to my friends, both young and old, and to teachers of the Social Sciences. It is a heartwarming and truly revealing story.
Huda Giddens, Founder of the Giddens School, in Seattle, WA
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An innocent Jewish-American sixteen-year, mourning after the death of her mother, goes on an unexpected journey of a lifetime in Israel and the Occupied West Bank. Her father, busy with his work as an archeologist leaves her to explore alone. An Israeli cousin introduces Melody to society, including drug use and IDF soldiers whose unwanted sexual advances add to her trauma. Melody’s alienation in Israeli society inspires her to seek the comfort of her best friend from Vermont who happens to be visiting her Palestinian family in Hebron. Even before Melody goes through the frightening checkpoints in Bethlehem, she is surprised by separate bus stations for Arabs and Israelis. Her confusion as a Jewish-American taught that Arabs hate Jews grows into a deep understanding of realities faced by her friend. Graffiti stained walls, guard towers, women and children huddled near turnstiles and metal detectors at checkpoints, heavily armed soldiers checking IDs, including hers. On Shuhada Street, the main market place in Hebron, Melody documents the occupation with her camera that “felt like a shield and a sword.” Perhaps, the most painful reality is that Hebron reminded her of studies about Nazi Germany— only this time Palestinians are the object of hate. Melody’s religious Jewish boyfriend who accompanies her on this journey via long distance texts from the States, adds another level of complexity. The dialogue— inner and outer are believable. The descriptions of preparing and eating Palestinian food let the reader know the author has truly tasted this fare. The glossary is helpful to readers unfamiliar with Arabic & Hebrew words used in the story. As Melody seeks to find herself, the book reads like a yearning for compassionate understanding between people who never should have become lethal enemies.
Iris Keltz, Author, Activist, Teacher
Unexpected Bride in the Promised Land: Journeys in Palestine & Israel (2017 Nighthawk Press, Taos New Mexico)