“Rocks and Sand” is a new book by Frieda Haddad Abs. Its subtitle introduces us to the atmosphere of the book:”The tune of a Song the Words of Which lay forgotten” with an added clarification: “Tracing the pathway of a soul that has shaken off the dust of war that had enshrouded it as it develed back to its roots.”
The author takes the reader to her hometown, Abey, to its natural wonders, its history, its customs and folklore, to outstanding faces of its past that have left their stamp on its self identity, as well as to the wounds and sorrows of the war years as they darken its communal identity. The book carries us to the author’s own personal itinary from childhood years to adulthood leading us with words and pictures through the meanders of hills, rocks and dwellings to a reconquered inner reconciliation and peace.
About the author: Frieda Haddad Abs is at present a lecturer at Haigazian University and Coordinator of the Social Work Program at its Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She successively occupied the posts of Director of the Social Services Training Center with the Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs, Lecturer in Pastoral Theology and Religious Education at the Theological Institute of Saint John the Damascene (Balamand University), Assistant Program Officer and Social Services Consultant with the UNICEF Area Office in Beirut, and Lecturer in Social Work at the Lebanese American University. She is the author of a number of training manuals for social work education and pastoral work.