Grade 5–9—Thirteen-year-old Azad, an Iranian Kurd, narrates Mead's affecting tale of life during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The repressive regime of Ayatollah Khomeini has already torn Azad's family apart. An only child who has lived with his father during the six years following his parents' divorce, he learns in the course of the novel that his mother left the family because his father, driven by fear, became an informer for the secret police. Along with this familial tension, the Kurds' untenable situation also undergirds the story. This ethnic group lives in double jeopardy, distrusted by their own government and hated by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Azad is fortunate in being able to spend time with each of his parents and in being able to leave his home in Sardasht for the rural village where his grandmother lives. The galvanizing event of the months covered by the novel is Hussein's gassing of Sardasht, which leads Azad, his mother, and other family members to flee Iran for Turkey. Like Elizabeth Laird and Sonia Nimr's A Little Piece of Ground (Haymarket, 2006), Dawn and Dusk is a tale of children caught in the horror of war, seen from the side of the conflict considered most hostile to American interests. Azad is an appealing protagonist, and it is his simple and direct story that will draw readers through the complexities of a multinational ethnic longing for self-determination that remains at the heart of an international tinderbox.—Coop Renner, Hillside Elementary, El Paso, TX
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