Illinois State Library

General Information

Name:  Scott S. Crye  

Genre:

Born:

Sites:

• WorldCat -- http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=scott+s.+crye

E-Mail:

• crye@motion.net

Athena Press. 2004

Jenna is a young, beautiful, strong-willed woman

she is also a highly respected doctor and conducts research in one of the most sophisticated and cutting-edge fields of medicine. However, she is also a Palestinian...in a post 9/11 America, a nation bristling with hostility towards a culture and area of the world about which they know very little. Fortunately for her, since her move to the town of Springfield, she has made many good friends, including the Larsens, who are so warm and welcoming that they slowly begin to fill that painful void in Jenna's life: the loss of her family to a "mistake" bombing by the Israeli Armed Forces. Their generosity and concern for her safety and well-being knows no bounds

Jenna develops a deep friendship withthem, which ultimately proves itself in the face of a tragic accident. This young woman's story is one of courage under fire-the fire of prejudice, hostility, bigotry and chauvinism. Thanks to her friends and colleagues, who see and love her for who she is-not what she wears or how she looks-there can be a reconciliation of cultural differences between East and West, a peaceful symbiosis that is rare amidst the ignorance and fear which abounds in the face of the unknown. Jenna undermines all the misconceptions of a culture construed to be so different from the American one. The story of her enduring friendship with the "all-American" Larsen family provides a heart-warming blueprint for a world without prejudice, a world which finally accepts that cultural differences are merely superficial and that, deep inside, we are all built of the same flesh and blood.