{"id":20717,"date":"2013-04-18T16:16:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T20:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=20717"},"modified":"2014-05-09T00:48:54","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T04:48:54","slug":"origin-by-diana-abu-jaber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/origin-by-diana-abu-jaber\/","title":{"rendered":"Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2013\/04\/Origin.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-26584\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2013\/04\/Origin.jpg\" alt=\"Origin\" width=\"329\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a>Hapa Jordanian American\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dianaabujaber.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Diana Abu-Jaber<\/a>\u00a0established herself with her first three titles\u00a0\u2013 novels\u00a0<em>Arabian Jazz<\/em> and\u00a0<em>Crescent,\u00a0<\/em>and memoir\u00a0<em>The Language of Baklava\u00a0\u2013\u00a0<\/em>as a lauded, award-winning Arab American literary voice. She leaves her own origins off the page in this\u00a0chilling psychological thriller \u2013 her first, but most likely not her last. With little resemblance to formulaic\u00a0pulp mysteries, <em>Origin\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 so aptly titled\u00a0\u2013<em>\u00a0<\/em>is\u00a0a multi-layered\u00a0<i>k\u014dan<\/i> about the challenges, and sometimes the impossibility, of knowing one&#8217;s own self.<\/p>\n<p>Lena Dawson works as a fingerprint specialist in an upstate New York forensics lab. For someone who chose the job because the employer provided\u00a0training, Lena turns out to be rather gifted in her work. When an understandably distraught mother who has just lost her infant \u2013\u00a0allegedly to SIDS \u2013\u00a0storms into the office, Lena is pulled into a horrifying tangle of dead babies, empty cribs, and virtually no clues.\u00a0The grieving mother remembers Lena&#8217;s last unintentionally high-profile case during which Lena unmasked the murderer by seeing into all the places where no one else was looking.<\/p>\n<p>Separated from a cheating husband, surrounded by less-than-trustworthy colleagues, finding companionship either with her psychologically challenged\u00a0neighbor\u00a0or in the wee hours with the employees at the local bakery, Lena is anything but &#8216;normal.&#8217; Fostered, but never legally adopted by the only parents she knows, Lena&#8217;s fragile psyche harbors vague memories of her original mother who she believes was not human\u00a0\u2013 she was apparently raised by apes. Her mysterious origins are somehow linked to the growing number of small lifeless bodies; the alarming body count rules out SIDS, and suddenly the serial killer&#8217;s next victim just might be Lena.<\/p>\n<p>Although the non-human babyhood never proves convincing, to Abu-Jaber&#8217;s credit, that Lena believes in her shocking origins is wholly conceivable. That detail aside,\u00a0<em>Origin<\/em>\u00a0intertwines multiple, disparate strands\u00a0\u2013 desperate relationships, challenges of adoption, identity formation, the science of forensics, the layered legal system\u00a0\u2013 and pulls together quite the nerve-wracking, unexpectedly twisted, smartly resolved (albeit not\u00a0<em>too<\/em> neatly) thriller. For those of you who choose to go audible, narrator Elisabeth S. Rogers reads with just enough nervous breathlessness to keep you guessing (often wrongly) with each new discovery. Get ready to shiver &#8230;!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2007<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hapa Jordanian American\u00a0Diana Abu-Jaber\u00a0established herself with her first three titles\u00a0\u2013 novels\u00a0Arabian Jazz and\u00a0Crescent,\u00a0and memoir\u00a0The Language of Baklava\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a lauded, award-winning Arab American literary voice. She leaves her own origins off the page in this\u00a0chilling psychological thriller \u2013 her first, but most likely not her last&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,177,81,6],"tags":[82,84,6608,445,446,10,11,13,212,216,447,39],"class_list":["post-20717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-arab-american","category-audio","category-fiction","tag-adoption","tag-betrayal","tag-bookdragon","tag-diana-abu-jaber","tag-elisabeth-s-rogers","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-love","tag-murder","tag-mystery","tag-origin","tag-parent-child-relationship"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/origin-by-diana-abu-jaber\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hapa Jordanian American\u00a0Diana Abu-Jaber\u00a0established herself with her first three titles\u00a0\u2013 novels\u00a0Arabian Jazz and\u00a0Crescent,\u00a0and memoir\u00a0The Language of Baklava\u00a0\u2013\u00a0as a lauded, award-winning Arab American literary voice. 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