An evocative and stirring novel about a young woman living in the fascinating and rarely portrayed community of Yemenite Jews of the mid-twentieth century, from the acclaimed author of The Family Orchard . In the tradition of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent , Henna House is the enthralling story of a woman, her family, their community, and the rituals that bind them. Nomi Eve’s vivid saga begins in Yemen in 1920, when Adela Damari’s parents desperately seek a future husband for their young daughter. After passage of the Orphan’s Decree, any unbetrothed Jewish child left orphaned will be instantly adopted by the local Muslim community. With her parents’ health failing, and no spousal prospects in sight, Adela’s situation looks dire until her uncle arrives from a faraway city, bringing with him a cousin and aunt who introduce Adela to the powerful rituals of henna tattooing. Suddenly, Adela’s eyes are opened to the world, and she begins to understand what it means to love another and one’s heritage. She is imperiled, however, when her parents die and a prolonged drought threatens their long-established way of life. She and her extended family flee to the city of Aden where Adela encounters old loves, discovers her true calling, and is ultimately betrayed by the people and customs she once held dear. Henna House is an intimate family portrait and a panorama of history. From the traditions of the Yemenite Jews, to the far-ranging devastation of the Holocaust, to the birth of the State of Israel, Eve offers an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a textured chronicle of a fascinating period in the twentieth century. Henna House is a rich, spirited, and sensuous tale of love, loss, betrayal, forgiveness, and the dyes that adorn the skin and pierce the heart. Adela is a young Jewish girl in early twentieth-century Yemen. In a house full of garrulous brothers, an ailing father, and a bitter mother, Adela seeks solace in a hidden cave where she can dream and, most of all, protect herself from the attentions of the Confiscator, a Muslim official who seizes Jewish children whose fathers have died. Racing against time and her father’s illness, Adela’s family makes an engagement with a distant cousin, Asaf, whom Adela invites into her cave and her heart. When Asaf and his father leave town, Adela is comforted by the arrival of her aunt, a henna artist, and her female cousins. As Adela grows, we follow her family and its community through their journey to the prosperous port of Aden; marriages and deaths; the establishment of Israel; and, finally, their departure for Israel in the famous airlift Operation On Wings of Eagles. Although somewhat generic in its depiction of female companionship and the hidden sensualities of traditional cultures, the novel is a welcome glimpse into this historical moment and little-known culture. --Lynn Weber A captivatingand evocative novel, at once intensely intimate and sweeping in scope. NomiEve is a wonderful writer—compassionate, intelligent, assured—and her deeply felt, richly imagined bookwill stay with me for a long time. -- Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans “This was a book I had to read twice:the first time to rush through quickly to find out what will ultimately happento the characters, and the second time to slowly savor the descriptions ofthese marvelous, exotic people and locales. Nomi Eve captivated me.” -- Maggie Anton, author of Rashi’s Daughters and Rav Hisda’s Daughter Nomi Eve's novel is a heady mixof henna, history, and the power of words written on skin, sand, andpaper. An engrossing, surprising, compelling read. -- Indira Ganesan, author of As Sweet as Honey Nomi Eve is the author of The Family Orchard , which was a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection and was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award. She has an MFA in fiction writing from Brown University and has worked as a freelance book reviewer for The Village Voice and New York Newsday . Her stories have appeared in Glimmer Train Stories , The Voice Literary Supplement , Conjunctions , and The International Quarterly . She is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College and lives in Philadelphia with her family. Henna House Prologue I loved Asaf before I loved Hani. I think of him looking out at me from deep within his cold armor. His eyes beseech me. Rescue me, they say. Melt my prison, breathe on my fate, and release me with the heat of your forgiveness. Auntie Aminah used to say that there were people who died as they lived, and others who did “quite the opposite.” She was referring to the lazy woman who died dancing, or the man with the energy of fire who lay on his deathbed like a snuffed-out ember. According to my aunt, such mismatched deaths left an imbalance for the angels to tinker with in the World to Come. Asaf’s death was like that. He was a boy on a thundering horse, a child of the hot northern dunes—yet he died a cold, still death,