Summary

The author spends some time establishing the reality of the story he's about to tell. In First Words, he describes directions that one would take to find the house depicted in the book and the lemon tree alluded to in the title. In the author's note, he goes on to describe the research that went into creating the book, authenticating every fact included in the narrative. The author is careful, however, to distinguish that the book should not be taken as a complete authority on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In the section "A Note on Spelling and Punctuation," the author goes on to detail the significance of spellings of names, and his reasoning for choosing certain spellings over others when depicting places and people in the book. Often this choice is based on...