Exile
by Richard North Patterson
Published by Henry Holt and Company
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Reviewed by Caron Smith
Richard North Patterson is an accomplished author of thirteen previous novels. Exile, I believe, is his most compelling work.
Exile does not read like a novel, but instead grips you with the fierce reality of war between Palestine and Israel: Jews versus Islam.
Exile is the bittersweet story of forbidden love between a man and a woman that can never come to fruition. Even though David Wolfe and Hana Arif share a thirteen-year-old daughter from a secret love affair, the scars of war build a bridge too strong for either of them to conquer. David, a Jew and Hana, a Palestinian, have has been living in exile for many years with her militant husband, Saed.
David's life is headed in the right direction: he's a successful San Francisco attorney who is engaged to be married, and is being primed for politics. A phone call from Hana, the woman he's never forgotten, tosses him into the fray of Middle Eastern conflict. Hana has been accused of being the mastermind behind the assassination of the prime minister of Israel by a suicide bomber.
Patterson, formerly a trial lawyer, uses his expertise in the courtroom to enhance the drama of Hana's trial as he effectively defends her in a court of law that has international consequences.
David's trip to Jerusalem is so well written, that the reader can easily believe they are walking in his footsteps in the Holy Land where Jesus Christ resided and ultimately died on the cross.
Middle East politics is a lethal hotbed of murder, suicide bombers, and excruciating pain, both physical and emotional, that shreds lives into tiny filaments of hatred. Patterson effectively portrays the differences in Palestine and Israel as an unsolvable crisis. The intensive research that Patterson used to create this powerful novel brings to life the conflict that the average American, oblivious to war, consistently denies as truth.
Armchair Interviews says: Exile is a novel of intrigue, conspiracy and a fatalistic love between two people whose cultures separates them in a timeless void