Fares Aoun’s new novel is the story of an unlikely friendship between two men, a white prison warden named Scott and an African-American inmate named Joe, in a segregated prison in the American south. The book draws a parallel between the fight to end segregation, discrimination, and the dehumanizing treatment of African Americans during the civil rights era and the struggle of the Palestinian in modern-day Jerusalem. The author’s intent was to help Americans find a frame of reference for understanding the situation in the Middle East and to put a face on a problem that Americans too often dismiss as having nothing to do with them.
Jerusalem Spring was just released in print and digital formats on www.createspace.com/3497923 , Amazon.com, and for the Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers.
The book explores the tensions in the relationship between Scott and Joe and the other people in their lives. Scott’s wife has become unhappy with the segregation in their town. New inmates arrive and challenge the status quo. Joe becomes less reliable as Scott’s informant and the warden begins to question his motives as he tries to redeem himself in the eyes of those he cares about.
The story takes place both in the American south during the civil rights era and in a modern-day Jerusalem. Scott and Joe struggle to connect and overcome the obstacles to their friendship despite prison riots, bus explosions, and recruitment efforts by fundamentalist groups bent on destruction. The characters’ lives intersect across racial, religious, political, and geographic boundaries, delivering a message of hope overcoming prejudice.
