For readers of Pachinko and Queenie, a funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women.
TOO SOON
by Betty Shamieh
Avid Reader Press, January 2025
(via Writers House)
Arabella gets an unexpected chance at love when she’s thrust into a conflict and history she’s tried to avoid all her life.
Zoya is playing matchmaker for her last unmarried granddaughter—introducing Arabella to the very eligible grandson of an old flame and stirring up buried family history.
Naya is keeping a secret from her family that will change all their lives.
Thirty-five-year-old Arabella, a New York theatre director whose dating and career prospects are drying up, is offered an opportunity to direct a risqué cross-dressing interpretation of a Shakespeare classic (that might garner international attention) in the West Bank. Her grandmother, Zoya, plots to make a match between her and Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Arabella agrees to meet Aziz since her growing feelings for Yoav, a celebrated Israeli American theatre designer, seem destined for disaster.
Arabella and Aziz’s instant connection reminds Zoya of the passion she once felt for Aziz’s grandfather, a man she desired desperately, even after her father arranged another husband for her. In turn, Zoya would later marry off her youngest daughter, Naya, who aspired to date the Jackson 5 and wasn’t ready to be a wife or mother to Arabella at sixteen. Now that Naya’s children are grown and she’s arrived at an abrupt midlife crossroads, it’s time to settle old scores…
With biting hilarity, Too Soon introduces us to a trio of bold and unforgettable voices. This dramatic saga follows one family’s epic journey from fleeing war-torn Jaffa in 1948, chasing the American Dream in Detroit and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, hustling in the New York theatre scene post-9/11, and daring to stage a show in Palestine in 2012. Upon learning one of them is living on borrowed time, three women fight to live, make art, and love on their own terms. Too Soon joins the stories that seek to illuminate our shared history and ask, how can we set ourselves free?
Read the profile of Betty Shamieh from The Atlantic, written by Gal Beckerman.
Betty Shamieh is a Palestinian American writer and the author of fifteen plays. She is currently the Mellon Playwright-in-Residence at the Classical Theatre of Harlem, where her comedy, Malvolio, a sequel to Twelfth Night had its world premiere in July 2023 to wide critical acclaim, including as a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Her dramedy Roar, which was also a New York Times Critic’s Pick, premiered off-Broadway in a sold-out extended run. Betty is the founding artistic director of The Semitic Root, an artistic collective that supports innovative theatre co-created by Arab and Jewish Americans, which presented her plays Chocolate in Heat and The Strangest. Selected as a Denning Visiting Artist at Stanford and a Clifton Visiting Artist at Harvard, Shamieh was named a UNESCO Young Artist for Intercultural Dialogue. A graduate of Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, she has been awarded a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowship in Playwriting. Her works have been translated into seven languages and are widely produced internationally, including at the EU Capital of Culture Festival.
Sandy thought she was making her greatest mistake yet when she got unexpectedly pregnant in her mid-thirties by a dating-app flop. Now, her baby Rosie is the love of her life, but trying to co-parent with her daughter’s dad, a wannabe rock star, is a challenge—and seems to be veering into catastrophe territory when Sandy finds out through social media that her daughter has a half-sibling Sandy doesn’t know anything about. 
A few things to know about the town of St. Muckle’s: It’s too out-of-the-way to interest greedy lords, and too damp and muddy for marauding dragons to burn. And anyone, from a humble serf to a runaway nun, may earn their freedom by living for a year and a day within the town walls. Seven years ago, Charl and his mother fled to St. Muckle’s and made it their safe-haven, building a new life in this so called Peasant’s Paradise. But when Charl sees something impossible—a ghost—soon the embers of his past are threatening to engulf his world in flame. A tragic accident is quickly followed by murder, a deadly plague, and a mercenary dragon.