Thir­teen-year-old Clare has died and has been reborn as a cat. As a girl, she lived in Beth­le­hem, Penn­syl­va­nia and was irrespon­sible, thought­less, unkind and imma­ture. As a cat, she lives in Beth­le­hem in the area that the author calls the West Bank and that many Israelis call Judea. 

Clare-the-cat has no polit­i­cal opin­ions at all, in fact she still has the sen­si­bil­i­ties of Clare-the-girl who cared lit­tle for such issues. As a cat, she is inter­est­ed in find­ing enough food to sur­vive in the semi-wild and wants to be safe from the more ter­ri­to­r­i­al ani­mals in the area. And yet she finds it is almost impos­sible, cat or not, to remain aloof from the issues if she is resid­ing in that par­tic­u­lar spot in the world in that par­tic­u­lar moment in his­to­ry. Due to cir­cum­stance, she finds her­self tak­ing shel­ter in a house along with two Israeli sol­diers and she finds a young Arab boy hid­ing in the house, as well. The sit­u­a­tion is poten­tially explo­sive and becomes more and more so as events unfold and a mob gath­ers and as emo­tions relat­ing to polit­i­cal, social, and cul­tur­al events begin to percolate. 

Has Clare learned any­thing from her life as a human being that she can apply to her life as a cat to make the sit­u­a­tion bet­ter for any­one? After hav­ing lived a self­ish and uncar­ing life as a per­son, would she want to help any­one now even if she could? And can one turn a pow­er­less state of being into some­thing more if one is moti­vat­ed and resourceful? 

Inter­est­ing and off-beat, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sim­ple and com­plex, this book walks a fine line which verges on tak­ing a too-strong polit­i­cal view­point but just man­ages to steer clear of the pit­falls while giv­ing the read­er much food for thought. The char­ac­ters each have enough nuanced moments to pro­vide some counter­point to typ­i­cal stereo­types and to show that human beings are com­pli­cat­ed and not real­ly that easy to pigeon­hole. The moral dilem­mas are unfor­tu­nate­ly all too real. 

Clare is writ­ten in a quirky voice with many touch­es of humor and she shows growth and increas­ing depth as the sto­ry unfolds. This would be an inter­est­ing book for dis­cus­sion in a group set­ting and would spark some live­ly debate.