The Treasure of Maria Mamoun - Michelle Chalfoun

Hardcover

2017 Arab American Book Award Winner

Children/Young Adult

The Treasure of Maria Mamoun
By Michelle Chalfoun
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2016)

Twelve-year-old Maria lives a lonely, latchkey-kid's life in the Bronx. Her Lebanese mother is working two nursing jobs to keep them afloat, and Maria keeps her worries to herself, not wanting to be a burden. Then something happens one day between home and school that changes everything. Mom whisks them to an altogether different world on Martha's Vineyard, where she's found a job on a seaside estate. While the mysterious bedridden owner keeps her mother busy, Maria has the freedom to explore a place she thought could only exist in the movies. Making friends with a troublesome local character, Maria finds an old sailboat and stumbles upon a map that she is sure will lead to pirate's plunder... but golden treasure may not be the most valuable thing she discovers for herself this special summer.

Michelle Chalfoun is a pediatric nurse who lives with her husband and children on Long Island, New York. The Treasure of Maria Mamoun is her first book for young readers.