New Yorker Jordan Salama (Every Day the River Changes) always knew his Jewish family had both Arab and Argentinian roots. In his compelling second book, Stranger in the Desert, Salama traces his journey through Latin America in search of his great-grandfather, Selim Salama, a traveling salesman who left a colorful but vague legacy. Inspired by a binder bulging with stories and photos--his abuelo's handmade family archive--Salama heads to the Argentine Andes to learn more about Selim's life and possibly meet his great-grandfather's other descendants.
Salama is a thoughtful narrator, giving historical context for readers who may know little about the political, social, and economic forces that led to displaced Jews (and others) working as traveling salesmen (who came to be known as turcos) in Argentina. During his travels, Jordan sends brief e-mails to his abuelo (some of which are included here), sharing his triumphs and disappointments--since the journey contains both exciting twists and seeming dead ends.
As he travels through the Andes, Salama meets local historians; shopkeepers and restaurateurs; modern-day turcos and other travelers; and relatives both familiar and previously unknown. Though Selim Salama himself proves elusive, Jordan's quest for the "Lost Salamas," his grandfather's lost descendants, gradually fades into the background. What he does discover is something deeper and more compelling: his own soul-level connection to the land that became his ancestors', its customs and language echoed in his abuelo's house in the Hudson Valley.
Though Jordan Salama had grown up hearing fragments of Spanish and Arabic, he comes to embrace both languages during his time in South America. He also deepens his understanding of cultural rituals, snapping photos next to empty soccer stadiums and meeting a traveling salesman who peddles bombillas, the long metal straws used to sip yerba mate. By way of vivid anecdotes and thumbnail sketches of the people he meets, Salama shares the excitement, confusion and sometimes sadness of his quixotic quest--and the unexpected insights he found along the way.
Through the lens of his family's layered identity, Salama muses on being a traveler, a wanderer, a person of mixed identities in a world that prefers to sort people into tidy linguistic or cultural boxes. But like his abuelo's handwritten Historia Antigua, Salama's story is larger and messier than a simple linear narrative: its richness spans cultures, continents, languages, faiths, and generations. His narrative honors the disparate journeys of his ancestors while telling a story of his own. Readers will be left musing on their own family histories, perhaps wondering what they might discover if they were to follow a loose thread or two. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Journalist Jordan Salama's vivid travelogue chronicles his journey through the Andes in search of stories about his Arab-Argentinian-Jewish family, especially his elusive great-grandfather.