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I initially thought this was going to be another of those trendy, Middle-Eastern, henna-and-bindhi novels, clinging like a parasitic vine to the fashionable ethnicity of the moment for sustenance. But in actuality, Staircase of a Thousand Steps stands up on its own merits, with a cast of characters caught between two worlds: the tiny, timeless village of the past, with its centuries of heaped-up secrets, and the shiny, modern world of America, splitting families with the seductive promise of wealth and prosperity. Suspenseful and vividly written, Staircase of a Thousand Steps is one book that actually lives up to its cover.
–Stephanie Perry
“What a powerful, intense, beautifully written story. Masha Hamilton takes us right into the brutal heart of the war zone, right into the guarded heart of journalist Caddie Blair. With spare and stunning prose, Hamilton reminds us that the distance between us often isn’t as great as we may think.”
–Gayle Brandeis, author of Fruitflesh and The Book of Dead Birds, winner of Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change
Bravo to Masha Hamilton. Her superb new novel, The Distance Between Us, captures the life and drama of a female war correspondent –the danger, the romance, the detachment, the intensity of the friendships and the ever-present question of what is real life and what is escape. Writing with uncommon elegance and humorous insight, Hamilton draws deftly on her own experience as a foreign correspondent to make the world of first-class news reporters come alive.
–Ann Blackman, journalist and author of Wild Rose, Civil War Spy, A True Story (June 05), Seasons of Her Life, A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright, and The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen.
Readers will not feel the same about war after reading Masha Hamilton’s eye-opening tale that vividly brings to life and death the horrors of constant terrorism with no end in sight. The fascinating storyline grips the reader from the moment that Caddie and crew meet death in Lebanon and never slows whether in Jerusalem, Gaza, or elsewhere. The cast seems genuine, as the audience will see behind the masquerade of brave boasting bravado to the fears of real people - Rating 10/10
–Harriet Klausner review
