A five year old Palestinian boy named Milad Salama awakens on a stormy morning in the Arab village of Dahiyat a-Salaam in East Jerusalem.  He is excited about a field trip for his kindergarten class to visit a theme park.  When he leaves his parents that morning none of them could possibly anticipate the nightmare of the coming hours.

Winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, Thrall, who has been involved in studying and working in the Middle East for decades, focuses on Milad’s father, Abed to tell the story of the tragic daily conflicts and humiliations of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

The story unfolds after an unqualified semi-trailer truck driver skids while speeding on a wet, poorly maintained road and strikes Milad’s school bus with its 30 children and teachers. The bus turns over, bursts into flames, and when no Israeli firefighters, ambulances, soldiers or other first responder show up for some time, six children and one teacher die in the fiery holocaust, among them Milad.

The story is so painful and difficult to read that I quit halfway through the book and didn’t return to finish it for 10 days.  The hatred on both sides, the repression that daily humiliates and frustrates the occupied and the arrogance and spite of the occupiers, has dehumanized both communities, locked in a life-and-death struggle for land, peace, and life.

As a life-long lover and supporter of Israel, this book was particularly challenging for me to read.  By moving his focus from the ‘big picture’ to the particulars of Abed’s life, I was forced to face the impact of the Occupation on real people, people who like us and the Israelis love their children, strive for meaningful work, and just want to be left alone to live in peace.  The tragedy of the Israeli/Palestinian struggles over the last 100+ years, from the Arab Uprising in the 1930’s to the wars of survival waged by Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1963 are writ large in this ‘small’ story.

I would add this to your reading list if you, like me, struggle to resolve the seemingly impossible equation of how Israel, the Jewish homeland and historical home to the Jewish people, can survive as a humane, democratic, Jewish state.  The October 7th massacre, hostage taking, and subsequent deaths of thousands in Gaza is only the latest evidence that there is no easy or even perhaps impossible solution.  Read this book and be better informed.