The Way to the Spring

Life and Death in Palestine

By: Ben Ehrenreich

Narrated by: Ben Ehrenreich

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life.

Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable New York Times Magazine cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring.

We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuściński, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away.

©2016 Ben Ehrenreich (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“The Way to the Spring is a riveting and powerful work...Readers near and far who seek greater understanding of how Palestinians live - and the violence they endure - are well served by Ehrenreich’s book.” (Haaretz)

“Ehrenreich's haunting, poignant and memorable stories add up to a weighty contribution to the Palestinian side of the scales of history.” (New York Times Book Review)

“An impassioned and humane story.” (O Magazine)

I wish everyone would read or listen to this

The author shows us the side of this conflict that is not covered in America, and the brave human beings who suffer tragically because of it.

Well planned and informative

I had imagined that the West was influenced with heavy bias and vague understanding of the Middle East. I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

This book was eye opening to the situation and a must read for anyone remotely interested in finding the truth.

Amazing account.

Admittedly one-sided, but when it comes to this issue, all accounts are. Provides personal, actual, but also historical insight into the Palestine-Israeli conflict up until and after the Gaza war of 2014. Don't believe what they tell you on Fox news. Read this book for a different perspective.

Untold stories

A reminder of the reality in Palestine, resistance, divisions between two peoples, and a perspective and stories that are never talked about in this part of the world. Great read!!

All I can say is, shamefully, I did not know 😔

A must read for the those standing blindly with Isreal - it is eye-opening to see how much our media omits

One-sided version of 'the truth'

I wanted to like this book, and don't completely disagree with the authors point of view, but the writing is so maddeningly one-sided that I gave up in frustration. If he just occasionally would have included some countervailing interviews, I might have been left with a less simplistic view of his thesis (Paletinians = good; Israelis = evil). This is not objective journalism despite the authors claim.

Almost childish wide eyed report with no insight

Endless reporting with a gee wiz style that grates. I found no substance beyond seeing people hurting makes the author feel bad. From other write ups I expected something interesting but found endless repetition that added nothing to the record of the mideast