Have you been anxiously waiting at the edge of your seat for news of the inaugural Armchair Travel Bookclub selection?

THE WAIT IS NOW OVER!

Available for purchase NOW, this book will ship in August. Special themed gifts and a virtual bookclub meeting with the author herself are some of the perks you receive by purchasing the book through River Dog Book Co. Don’t wait! Order your copy today!

[If you are from a country other than the USA or Canada, please contact us directly for payment processing – customerservice(at)riverdogbookco(dot)com.]

How it works.

You are more than welcome to purchase this book from your favorite book retailer. However, if you do purchase it from River Dog Book Co., $40 gets you all of this:

• a hardcover copy of The Map of Salt and Stars delivered to your door
• a special gift associated with the book (to be revealed soon!)
• access to the virtual bookclub meeting with the author
• all associated shipping, taxes, and fees included

The book will start shipping in early August and will include the special gift(s) we’re creating for this specific book and this bookclub. A weekly discussion or thought-provoking question will be posted in the Facebook group starting August 1. Virtual and in-person bookclub meetings will begin in September. One of those virtual meetings will include the author herself! Bookclub members who have purchased the book through River Dog Book Co. will receive access to that virtual meeting.

River Dog Review.

Scheherazade’s The Thousand and One Nights meets Alan Gratz’s Refugee in this important debut novel. A 12th century fable about an apprentice mapmaker is interwoven with a modern-day Syrian refugee searching for home, as the plot follows both girls through the Middle East, encountering tremendous dangers and immense acts of kindness. A must-read for teens and adults, this is an incredibly moving and lushly described story of family and friends, meaningful culture, changing landscapes, and universal hope. There are parts that will make your heart stop and parts that will make it beat again. It’s an incredible force, with the most vivid descriptions that made me long to see, smell, and taste everything described. I already can hardly wait to read what Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar publishes next.

About the book.

This rich, moving, and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan; the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and a medieval adventurer apprenticed to a legendary mapmaker—places today’s headlines in the sweep of history, where the pain of exile and the triumph of courage echo again and again.

In the summer of 2011, just after Nour loses her father to cancer, her mother moves Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. In order to keep her father’s spirit as she adjusts to her new home, Nour tells herself their favorite story—the tale of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to apprentice herself to a famous mapmaker.

But the Syria Nour’s parents knew is changing, and it isn’t long before the war reaches their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a stray shell destroys Nour’s house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety—along the very route Rawiya and her mapmaker took eight hundred years before in their quest to chart the world. As Nour’s family decides to take the risk, their journey becomes more and more dangerous, until they face a choice that could mean the family will be separated forever.

Following alternating timelines and a pair of unforgettable heroines coming of age in perilous times, The Map of Salt and Stars is the epic story of one girl telling herself the legend of another and learning that, if you listen to your own voice, some things can never be lost.