The Silk Choir captures the fascinating life and times of a late 19th century immigrant family from Mount Lebanon in America. Well researched and a highly readable story, it is interwoven in the history of the United States during its rapid industrialization and rise to the rank of a world power. Arabic speaking and multireligious, leaving villages and cities in the declining Ottoman Empire's province of Greater Syria--comprising the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine--the first significant wave of Syrian emigrants was a chorus singing Odes to America, the idea. They worked in textile mills, ship yards, foundries, mining, railroads, agriculture, and construction. Some peddled goods from a pack on their backs and many succeeded in making the transition from selling on streets, roads of the countryside, and back stoops of homes to a storeroom on Main Street and into professions.