Inspired by fam­i­ly lore, a young writer embarks on an epic quest through the Argen­tine Andes in search of a her­itage span­ning hemi­spheres and cen­turies, from the Jew­ish Lev­ant to turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry trade routes in South America

One Thanks­giv­ing after­noon at his grand­par­ents’ house, Jor­dan Sala­ma dis­cov­ers a large binder stuffed with yel­low­ing papers and old pho­tographs — a five-hun­dred-year wan­der­ing his­to­ry of his Arab-Jew­ish fam­i­ly, from Moor­ish Spain to Ottoman Syr­ia to Argenti­na and beyond.

One sto­ry in par­tic­u­lar cap­tures his atten­tion: that of his great-grand­fa­ther, a Syr­i­an-born, Ara­bic-speak­ing Jew­ish immi­grant to Argenti­na who in the 1920s worked as a trav­el­ing sales­man in the Andes — and may have left behind for­got­ten descen­dants along the way. Encour­aged by his grand­fa­ther, Jor­dan goes in search of these ​“Lost Sala­mas,” trav­el­ing more than a thou­sand miles up the spine of South America’s great­est moun­tain range.

Com­bin­ing trav­el­og, his­to­ry, mem­oir, and reportage, Stranger in the Desert trans­ports read­ers from the lone­ly plains of Patag­o­nia to the breath­tak­ing alti­plano of the high Andes; from the old Jew­ish quar­ter of Dam­as­cus to today’s vibrant neigh­bor­hoods of Buenos Aires. It is also a fer­vent jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery as Sala­ma grap­ples with his own Jew­ish, Arab, and Latin Amer­i­can iden­ti­ties, inter­ro­gat­ing the sto­ries fam­i­lies tell them­selves, and to what end.