Masha Hamilton’s sec­ond nov­el, The Dis­tance Between Us, tells the sto­ry of Cad­die, a root­less jour­nal­ist. Set against a back­drop of a sus­pi­cious attack in Lebanon that leaves Caddie’s lover, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Mar­cus, dead in her arms, the nov­el offers a win­dow into the dan­ger and uncer­tain­ty that jour­nal­ists endure to cov­er their sto­ries. Cad­die, like most of the oth­er jour­nal­ists in this work, is strik­ing­ly soli­tary. She lacks fam­i­ly ties and is weary of emo­tion­al attach­ments that hint of real inti­ma­cy. Through her, the read­er learns about the demands that make rela­tion­ships and sta­bil­i­ty lia­bil­i­ties if a reporter wants assign­ments in places that are rife with con­flict and vul­ner­a­ble to violence. 

Sta­tioned in Jerusalem, Cad­die is a sea­soned reporter with years of expe­ri­ence in the Mid­dle East. But the com­plex­i­ties of the region prove too much for her. Despite her instincts, she becomes involved with Goron­sky, a mys­te­ri­ous Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­al whose real pur­pose in Israel has dark polit­i­cal over­tones that Cad­die dis­cov­ers too late. Goron­sky knows Cad­die needs to make sense of Mar­cus’ death, and he tries to use this vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to right wrongs com­mit­ted against his own fam­i­ly. In the end, Cad­die under­stands that she has been manip­u­lat­ed. The real­iza­tion leads her to over­come her need for revenge, her need to under­stand Goronsky’s true mis­sion. How­ev­er, she is still devot­ed to Israel. She decides that more than any­thing she is com­mit­ted to Jerusalem, and that the city’s sto­ry, its dai­ly rival­ries, and con­flicts is in fact her sto­ry as well.