**Intact Gift Giving Condition book**

His parents divorce, and at the age of eight, Joseph is sent to be raised in a Catholic convent. In the Lebanese village of Bhamdoun in 1931, Joseph Friedmann is born to a 15-year-old Jewish girl hastily married off to a man thirty years her senior. There he experiences anti-Semitism, betrayal, and a deep trauma he cannot bring himself to name. He falls in love with Isabella, a nun-in-training, but this too turns to heartbreak.