About Farewell, Aleppo
My Father, My People, and Their Long Journey Home 

The Jews of Aleppo, Syria, had been part of the city’s fabric for more than two thousand years, in good times and bad, through conquerors and kings. But in the middle years of the twentieth century, all that changed.

To Selim Sutton, a merchant with centuries of roots in the Syrian soil, the dangers of rising anti-Semitism made clear that his family must find a new home. With several young children and no prospect of securing visas to the United States, he devised a savvy plan for getting his family out: “exporting” his sons. In December 1940, he told the two oldest, Meïr and Saleh, that arrangements had been made for their transit to Shanghai, where they would work in an uncle’s export business. China, he hoped, would provide a short-term safe harbor and a steppingstone to America.

But the world intervened for the young men, now renamed Mike and Sal by their Uncle Joe. Sal became ill with tuberculosis soon after arriving and was sent back to Aleppo alone. And the war that soon would engulf every inhabited land loomed closer each day. Joe, Syrian-born but a naturalized American citizen, barely escaped on the last ship to sail for the U.S. before Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Japanese seized Shanghai. Mike was alone, a teen-ager in an occupied city, across the world from his family, with only his mettle to rely on as he strived to survive personally and economically in the face of increasing deprivation.

Farewell, Aleppo is the story—told by his daughter—of the journey that would ultimately take him from the insular Jewish community of Aleppo to the solitary task of building a new life in America. It is both her father’s tale that journalist Claudette Sutton describes and also the harrowing experiences of the family members he left behind in Syria, forced to smuggle themselves out of the country after it closed its borders to Jewish emigration.

The picture Sutton paints is both a poignant narrative of individual lives and the broader canvas of a people’s survival over millennia, in their native land and far away, through the strength of their faith and their communities. Multiple threads come richly together as she observes their world from inside and outside the fold, shares an important and nearly forgotten epoch of Jewish history, and explores universal questions of identity, family, and culture.

About the Author

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Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in the close-knit community of Syrian Jews all were part of Claudette Sutton’s childhood in suburban Maryland, along with her parents and siblings. Syrian foods, 

Writing began opening a door to the world for her when she was a teenager. After three years writing for the Montgomery County Sentinel in Maryland just after graduating high school, Claudette moved to New York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree from the Seminar College (now Eugene Lang College) of the New School for Social Research. Living in proximity to another side of her extensive family, she built a deeper understanding of the Jewish exodus from Syria that has formed the backdrop for the story she tells in Farewell, Aleppo.

Told with a journalist's eye and a daughter's love, the narrative chronicles her father’s youth, his odyssey across oceans and continents, and the new life he made in America. What began as one man’s story grew into a portrait of the history that made his journey necessary, and of how a vibrant people have preserved their community and culture through the thousands of years from biblical times to today.

Today, Sutton lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she publishes Tumbleweeds, an award-winning quarterly newspaper that for over twenty years has been expanding its role in serving the city’s families. As the publication has grown, so have its scope and community contributions, mixing news, commentary, personal writing, advice, and activity guides—all reflecting Claudette’s vision of a community resource to help her neighbors face the challenges of parenting. 

About the Publisher: Terra Nova Books

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Available
in paperback:
via SCB Distributors, 
​at your favorite local bookstore,
and on Amazon

in ebook:
Kindle,
Barnes & Noble NOOK Book, 
 & iTunes

and now in audiobook:
Amazon
 & Audible

"A treasure of a book."
- Bernard Kalb
“This book is a jewel box.”
- Judith Fein
Terra Nova Books is an independent publishing company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since its founding in early 2012, it has tapped into a wellspring of creative talent, fascinating information, and moving personal stories. Visit Terra Nova Books online.