Wild Mulberries

Wild Mulberries interweaves the coming of age tale of Sarah, a young woman growing up in a small Druze village in the Lebanese Shuf Mountains, and the story of this village itself, especially its role in the production of silk worms. The women who make up the fabric of the village community tend to these silk worms. They are the focus of the book: from Sarah's mother who disappeared when she was a young girl, to her traditionally-minded paternal aunt who longs to be a shaykha, to the spunky Mut'ia from Aleppo, to her Armenian neighbor who longs to go back to her ancestral home. This novel is both a psychological tale of some depth and also a revealing portrayal of the lives of silk-growing villagers in a period of economic depression in Lebanon.