From the award-winning author of Dearborn, a tragicomic story collection that moves between Lebanon and Michigan, exploring migration, war, family, and the enduring pull of home.
In a village haunted by unexploded cluster bombs, a chorus of matriarchs obsess over a poet-turned-mayor who struggles to lead with a confident hand. While patrolling a public pool in Dearborn, Michigan, a 72-year-old lifeguard reminisces on his youthful days at a Beirut beach club and finds unexpected companionship in a glamorous widow. Driven to the brink by his visiting mother-in-law, a factory worker seeks sanctuary in a rented storage unit—a private world that struggles to stay insulated from the trauma of global conflict.
“When have I last read a collection so adept at rendering life’s richness? Ghassan Zeineddine’s characters are underlined in humor, beguiled by life’s absurdities, situated in profound insight they are not always able to see—that is to say, they are our beloved friends, ourselves. Simple, heartbreaking desires illuminate these pages. The stories in There’s Plenty of Sunshine Where You’re Headed feel like classics, as if they have always existed. They are miracles.”
Spanning the 1970s to the present day, There’s Plenty of Sunshine Where You’re Headed alternates stories set in Lebanon and Dearborn, tracing lives linked by migration, memory, loss, and longing. With his trademark humor and sincerity, Zeineddine offers a resonant portrait of the Arab and Arab American experience and the stubborn, surprising ways people keep building lives, no matter where they land.
“Ghassan Zeineddine more than delivers on the extraordinary promise of his spectacular debut. His stories continue to take on a ravaged world in flux, from Dearborn to Beirut, never flinching from its darkness or its beauty, its despair or even its humor. We are lucky to be privileged listeners to such a sharp-eyed and compassionate witness.”
“These funny, tender, beautifully transporting stories are crafted with startling poise and humanity. I lost hours in my reading chair.”