I downloaded this book quite some time ago so when I finally picked it up to read I was happily surprised to see that it represents Israel and Judaism and that the author is a Yemeni Israeli Jew.
Songs for the Brokenhearted covers the 1950’s pilgrimage of Yemeni Jews to Israel via Saida, a young girl who is married and has a baby and unwilling falls in love with another man while at the camp in Israel for Yemenites. Knowing nothing can come of this they go their separate ways. In 1995, around the time Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Saida’s youngest daughter, Zohara, comes back to Israel to sit shiva after Saida’s death. While there she discovers secrets about her mother that she sets out to solve.
At first glance I felt like this should have been 3 separate books since the three storylines seemed to have nothing to do with each other except for the relations of the characters, but as the book continued the I realized each storyline is actually dependent on the others. While I enjoyed the historical factors I thought Zohara’s recent past was a bit slow and found myself skimming those parts. That being said overall I really enjoyed this and thought it was an excellent way to tell about several factors of Israeli history that some people (ahem, me) might not know about.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy of this. Songs of the Brokenhearted hit the shelves on September 10th.