From Beirut with Love

Known for her journalism, Christine Estima has also published personal essays and travel writing, as well as fiction. The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society, a collection of short stories, is her first book. Years in the making, it reveals a writer who is sure of her subject and craft. “Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning,” Estima once explained in the magazine Maisonneuve, “I think about all my ancestors whose existence allowed me to have mine.” It is not surprising, then, that her background as a Montrealer of Lebanese, Syrian, and Portuguese descent is reflected in these linked stories that follow several generations of an Arab Canadian family.

Part 1 opens in 1860 with the tale of Holwé Lutfeya, who escapes Lebanon during the deadly civil conflict between Druze and Christians. In “The Castle of Montreal,” Holwé flees her village with her infant daughter, Hana. She makes her way to the coast —“My sandals tore from my feet at dawn as I neared...