The Girl from Foreign - Softcover

Shepard, Sadia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143115774 ISBN 13: 9780143115779

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2009

Synopsis

A search for shipwrecked ancestors, forgotten histories, and a sense of home

Fascinating and intimate, The Girl from Foreign is one woman's search for ancient family secrets that leads to an adventure in far-off lands. Sadia Shepard, the daughter of a white Protestant from Colorado and a Muslim from Pakistan, was shocked to discover that her grandmother was a descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny Jewish community shipwrecked in India two thousand years ago. After traveling to India to put the pieces of her family's past together, her quest for identity unlocks a myriad of profound religious and cultural revelations that Shepard gracefully weaves into this touching, eye-opening memoir.

About this title

Review:

" Elegantly crafted . . . [Shepard's] writing is vivid and her meditations on heritage and grief are moving."
-The New Yorker

" A meditation on how our individual memories inevitably slip away . . . A rich tapestry of theology, art, emotions and forgotten lore."
-The Washington Post

" Exquisite . . . Part love story, part history, part search-not only for what was lost, but for how to understand what is found . . . An act of love and courage."
-The Christian Science Monitor

About the Author:

Sadia Shepard is a documentary filmmaker and writer who lives in New York City. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997, from the Graduate Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University in 2000, and began her work with the Bene Israel community of India while on a Fulbright Scholarship. This is her first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143115774
• ISBN 13: 9780143115779
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384