The Words Between Us
When the Rahimi family arrives in Australia, they bring suitcases, memories, and two children who respond to their new world in completely different ways.
Five-year-old Arman enters school surrounded by English words he cannot understand. He watches. He listens. Mostly, he remains silent. His classmates talk and laugh around him, but the language moves too quickly to catch.
His older sister, Nila, has the opposite problem.
Eight-year-old Nila learns English so quickly she begins to sound like her Australian classmates. She understands their jokes. She finds her place at school. But as English becomes easier, parts of her old life begin to feel uncomfortable. She worries about her accent. She sometimes wishes her parents would speak English when her friends visit.
Their parents, Amir and Laleh, watch both children and wonder if they're doing something wrong.
Amir believes the answer is more English. More practice. More correction. If the children master the language quickly, perhaps life will become easier. Laleh is less certain. She worries that in helping their children belong to their new country, they may accidentally teach them to be ashamed of the world they came from.
Neither parent has a map for what comes next. And the children are not the only ones learning.
THE WORDS BETWEEN US is a warm, contemporary family novel about migration, language, childhood, and the complicated meaning of home. It's about a family discovering that belonging doesn't require choosing between two worlds, and that the languages we carry are not rivals but different ways of expressing the people and places we love.
At its heart is a simple question faced by families everywhere who begin again in a new country:
How do we give our children a new world without asking them to leave the old one behind?
Perfect for readers who love character-driven fiction, stories about family, migration, bilingualism, and what it means to truly belong.
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