ARAB BOY DELIVERED is an intimate story set in the late sixties. As Michael maneuvers through the working-class neighborhood delivering groceries, he enters the homes and lives of his customers. He’s confronted by the violence of racist bullies and falls for the radical college coed who teaches him about sex, love, and protest. Michael grieves with the mother whose only son died in the Vietnam War and is embraced by the first black couple who move into the neighborhood. They all shape him, and through the conflict of hate, acts of kindness, and his sexual awakening, Michael struggles to define his identity.
—Sahar Mustafah, The Beauty of Your Face
Arab Boy Delivered is an involving, well-told, multi-layered tale of Palestinian immigrants deepening their way into American life. They move from safe, Palestinian Brooklyn to a Queens neighborhood with more opportunity. We see Michael Haddad mature from fifteen-year-old working in the family grocery store to manhood as an NYU freshman—toughened against neighborhood prejudice, sweetened by a passionate, highly sexual affair with a slightly older woman. Set in the Vietnam War era, the novel also portrays a working-class neighborhood, kept imprisoned by deep-seated ethnic prejudices. In the end, Michael Haddad does not triumph. Yet he finds an open door: he escapes.
Frederic Hunter, Kivu
This is a sensitively-written and heartfelt book about an Arab family pursuing the American Dream in the late 1960s. It’s an important story, and I learned a great deal from their travails—both about the complexities of Arab-American identity and about the issues facing all immigrants to this country. In that sense, it’s a very timely novel about a subject that needs this kind of in-depth exploration.
Stephen Fife, The 13th Boy: A Memoir of Education and Abuse
Paul Zarou illuminates a rough and tumble neighborhood in Queens in the late 1960s with precision, clarity, and compassion . . . echoes of Philip Roth.
Steven Schlesser, The Soldier, the Builder & the Diplomat
