Publisher’s Weekly, STARRED
A foreign correspondent’s facade of emotional invincibility is shattered by the death of a colleague in journalist Hamilton’s sharply etched, emotionally ferocious second novel (after Staircase of a Thousand Steps).
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San Francisco Chronicle
Hamilton knows the geographic beauty and the unending blood feuds of the Middle East. She knows it as a journalist (for The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times), she knows it as a resident - the sights, sounds, smells of life and death seem to fill her every pore.
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The Christian Science Monitor
The Distance Between Us dramatizes difficult issues about what draws reporters - and readers - to stories of violence. What does it cost to become the kind of person who “can step over bloody ground for a quote”?
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Library Journal, STARRED
Caddie Blair is a war correspondent in the Middle East whose life is
tragically changed in a single second.
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Booklist
Hamilton not only captures the conflicted feelings of journalists but also the conflicted feelings of those living in the middle of the violence. All sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are presented fairly. Punchy dialogue and prose style turn this introspective look at violence and loss into a page-turner.
–Marta Segal Block
Jerusalem Post
I approached this novel, written by a veteran Middle East reporter and set in Israel during the intifada, with some trepidation, expecting yet another critique of Israel’s moral stance. But Masha Hamilton’s The Distance Between Us does not take sides. Her subject is grief and the desire for revenge, as experienced by a journalist whose colleague is killed.
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San Diego Union-Tribune
In The Distance Between Us, Masha Hamilton’s searing novel set amid the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Caddie is a journalist drawn to explosive violence like a moth to a flamethrower. She keeps getting singed from the heat, but it cauterizes her flayed emotions.
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iVillage
The Basics: As a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper covering the mayhem in Israel, Caddie Blair has to constantly justify her existence. Why is she putting herself in harm’s way? Why does she chase after ambulances and bombs when most people head in the other direction for safety? After she’s ambushed in Lebanon on her way to interview a terrorist, these questions become all the more urgent for those who know her. They want her to take some time to recover, because they can see she’s on the edge of sanity.
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The Seattle Times
Hamilton’s graceful prose, her ability to evoke the setting and her realistic portrayal of a journalist make the book interesting reading.
–Bharti Kirchner
Rocky Mountain News
Hamilton’s novel is a compelling look at the emotional challenges and psychological extremes of covering a war with a shifting front line, as well as a convincing story of love and self-discovery. … A former war correspondent in the Middle East and Moscow, Hamilton writes with the passion of someone who has witnessed firsthand the religious and cultural complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In an era when the richness of the Middle East is so often diluted by our American sensibilities, The Distance Between Us is not only compelling and fast-paced, but timely and enlightening as well.
–Jennie A. Camp
