Book rec - Henna House

I LOVED this book: Henna House by Nomi Eve.

Outlander was fun.  Not spectacular reading, but fun.  This one was moving. And poignant.  And painful. And breathtakingly beautiful.  I'm thinking about it days later.

I am fully aware that I love it so much because it's my favorite genre, historical fiction in the realm of The Red Tent: a strong female Jewish protagonist telling the story of her family over the years, with lots of historical context and ritual thrown in.  Henna House is set in Yemen and carries the family through the 1910s through the 1950s.  Henna is its own character: it's what binds the women together and carries their stories.

Before I began the book I knew absolutely nothing about that time period or culture besides a vague recollection that almost the entire body of Yemenite Jewry was airlifted to Israel early in the country's history.  After I finished the novel I spent the next night reading voraciously on Wikipedia all about the history of Yemen and the Arabian peninsula, the line between superstitions and Judaism in Yemenite culture, early Israeli treatment of Mizrahi Jews, the history of henna, and more.

I highly recommend it, if you like this sort of book!