Shoshana L

Hope Valley by Haviva Ner-David If there’s any book in the world which could bring peace to Israel and Palestine right now, this is it. ‘Hope Valley’ is an inspirational masterpiece. Haviva Ner-David gently and honestly brings to light the complicated, tense past and present between the two states, the bitterness felt by both nations and the seemingly impossible to penetrate wall built between them since before the state of Israel was established in 1948. And yet with beautiful, poetic, and balanced writing, Ner-David succeeds in knocking that wall down and showing her readers exactly how swiftly peace could be established, through friendship and kindness. And she makes it feel like not only is it possible, it’s necessary. At the beginning, in true Dickensian style, the book starts slowly and gives us a lot to absorb. However, from very early on, I couldn’t put it down – and I don’t say this lightly. As an avid reader and published author with little spare time, if a book does not capture my imagination very quickly I don’t waste my time on it. This book not only captured my imagination but also my heart, my soul, and it gave me hope. The realistically gradual fraught, highly strung and unlikely friendship between Tikvah and Ruby unfolds with elegance and charm, and the twists that await the reader are certainly worth the journey. Not only do I highly recommend this novel to all, but I urge you to read it. It will change your perceptions of Israel and Palestine and enlighten you as to how a peaceful solution can in fact easily be found. I have high expectations for this novel – not only that it will be read by many many people and get widely recognised as a work of great significance, but that it will also be translated as soon as possible into Arabic and Hebrew, so those who desperately need to read and absorb its hopeful and heart-warming messages, can do so as soon as possible. Then, as my review began, there will be peace one day soon between Palestine and Israel. Not only peace, but a friendship, a shared understanding of life, its tragedies and its beauty too.