I loved Ms. Wilentz' work on Haiti, a country I came to know well. She wrote brilliantly. I also know, not as well, the Middle East she writes about in Martyrs' Crossing, a book I read the minute it was available.I wanted to love it, but could not. It is not a good novel because it is more a parable than a plot. There is something terribly predictable here, and also I felt there was a steady greyness, like rain, running throughout the entire narrative. I believe the author would have been wiser, and benefited her many readers, to stick with non-fiction. That's because for a novel one needs more interiority, less predictablitiy. There is something too pat about her descriptions of the region, even though she clearly knows the current political realities. That's not the point. She doesn't know how to write a good novel. A shame...