"From that heaving pit of darkness, a golden tunnel of light shot up toward the heavens"....

...That's just what this raw, open wound of a book is. This novel is primarily an internal monologue of our protagonist, Arezu, as she travels to Spain to confront the ghost of her past, the ghost which has thus far defined the shape of her. This book is not an easy read. It's profoundly sad and there's work involved in turning the page. Van der Vliet Oloomi does an exceptional job here. There is very little critique of the writing, other than what I consider to be a slight overuse of some flowery words such as "limpid" and '"susurrus." Otherwise, this book is extremely well written and she puts the reader right in Arezu's head, into the turmoil and conflict and pain. Arezu is a woman that has never felt whole. She has suffered a childhood with an absentee father, been moved around the world by her mother, and reaped the pain of being of mixed race in a world that seeks to label everything. As a teen on the cusp of womanhood, running from the realities of being a Muslim in America, she finds herself in Spain seeking wholeness in a predator. For years she tries to reconcile the concept of rape with her memories of love and connection. Finally, she returns to Spain to face the ghosts head on and this book takes us with her. This is a stark and often painful look into the mind of a woman dealing with the trauma of a sexual assault by someone she thought she could trust after twenty years had passed. It's only at the very end of this book that we see a hint of that golden ray of light shining on her ocean of pain. Very well done, if you're brave enough to take the journey.