We Walked On | Babelica

Set during Lebanon’s civil war, We Walked On immerses readers in the landscape of war, weaving political unrest into everyday life. With Rita, a fourteen-year-old girl, and Hisham, her thirty-year-old Arabic teacher, Chehade has created two richly drawn characters who counter violence with the redemptive power of books and human connection and find authentic hope in untenable circumstances. We Walked On is a timely novel about what it’s like to live in a war zone, how war corrupts our moral sense, and how to survive and endure in an unjust world.

Thérèse Soukar Chehade’s first novel, Loom, was published in 2010 by Syracuse University Press and won the 2011 Arab American Award for fiction. It portrays a Lebanese-American family, the Zaydans, struggling to reckon with their memories of Lebanon’s civil war during a Vermont blizzard. We Walked On, published by Regal House Publishing in Fall 2024. Thérèse has spent the last two decades teaching English Language Learners at a public school in Amherst, MA. She lives in Granby, MA.