An unconventional name for a deeply honest memoir. 

David could have been a horrible story teller and writer (re: Britney Spears memoir) and this would have still been an amazing read. Lucky for us readers, David in fact is an excellent writer, he is engaging, funny, sarcastic, blunt, messy, and willing to share his personal journey in reconciliation and understanding. 

David’s wife, Jaime, was badly injured in a 2002 terrorist bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His wife was fortunate to survive, their friends were not so lucky. A surgeon gave David a piece of shrapnel that was removed from her body, a small broken nut. This small piece of metal changed his life and that of his wife’s forever. David being an academic by nature and a “forever student” had many unanswered questions after the bombing, mainly: Why? His goal now is to meet the man, and his family, who left the backpack with the bomb in the crowded cafeteria in July. Not out of revenge, but out of desperation to heal and understand. 

This memoir is told in a non-linear story telling at the beginning. We jump around between how David and Jamie met and decided to move to Israel which is broken up by the days leading up to the bombing as well as the initial days after the bombing. 

David will take some time to dive into the history of Israel and Palestine. There are chapters devoted to the political failings, broken promises for peace, unfair double standards, outright hostilities, among the plethora of issues which have caused and maintained the tension. 

We finish the memoir with David going to East Jerusalem and sitting down to talk to people who he is now bound to by violence. 

At the end of it you won’t have the answers to the questions you wanted but you’ll come out with hope and a new understanding.