MARTYRS' CROSSING

At a closed Israeli checkpoint, Marina, a Palestinian mother, clutches her ailing boy, desperate for access to Jerusalem and its doctors. When a young Israeli soldier waits too long before deciding to disobey orders, a martyr is born. Thus begins a graceful, painful, illuminating novel of the Middle East. Wilentz, who once covered the region for The New Yorker, is an incisive guide. Her prose tugs the reader from the dimly lit buildings of the Israeli bureaucracy, where spin doctors in epaulets plot to defuse the situation, to the smoky tearooms of Ramallah, where a child's death is transfigured into political capital. The characters are magnetic: Marina, who refuses forgiveness, and Doron, the Israeli soldier, who must have it. Wilentz's drawstring plot pulls them -- and surrounding family, politicos, and soldiers -- inevitably closer. The result is a very human tale of regrets, revenge, and the elusive nature of absolution. A-