When Emilie’s parents launch plans to emigrate from Lebanon to a pioneer life in the Brazilian Amazon, she flees her beloved Beirut in despair, intending to become a nun. Emir, her youngest and not entirely stable brother, tracks her down and threatens to shoot himself unless Emilie leaves the religious life immediately. Still despairing, the girl joins her relations in their new, sometimes fantastic existence in the jungle city of Manaus. With her she brings a trunk containing her nun’s habit, the convent’s hypnotic black clock, and other private keepsakes. Decades later, upon her death, Emilie’s extended family gather in Amazonia to ponder memories of the matriarch: her fervent piety, her tempestuous marriage to a devout Muslim, and the secrets she hoarded within the locked trunk. Hatoum, who teaches at the University of the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil, weaves a seamless, memorable family saga of touching and outrageous stories recounted by those who for years loved and feuded with Emilie. Recommended for most fiction collections. – Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.