Masjid Morning

Masjid Morning
264 Pages
ISBN 9781537233277

While their families feud, Atif, and Amy fall in love and strive to surmount their conflicting religions and cultural backgrounds and the opposition of their families. In a small Maryland town, Atif, a pre-med student, and Amy, a high school senior, meet secretly as Atif answers Amy’s questions about Islam. Their attraction grows, and Amy tries to convert him to Christianity, while Atif believes that if they marry, she will convert to Islam. Atif’s father, an immigrant from Lahore, Pakistan, and chief surgeon at a hospital, is leading his congregation in construction of a mosque, while Amy’s father, a decorated veteran of the Battle of Mogadishu who owns a large dairy farm, is opposed to the construction and heads a group doing everything they can to stop it.

Quick Reviews

“A thought-provoking and ultimately moving story that looks at love, human nature, and conservative religion.”–Kirkus Reviews “A powerful novel about hate and intolerance–religious and racial. But even more than that, it’s a Romeo and Juliet romance about two young people caught up in their parents’ feud.” – Kathy Cunningham “With Islamophobia on the rise in the US, publication of this interesting novel is quite timely. Its two intertwining plot lines converge in a stunning denouement that I won’t reveal.” –Edd Doerr, President of Americans for Religious Liberty

Richard A Morris

About Richard A Morris (Washington, DC Author)

Richard A Morris

When Richard Morris (8/16/43-11/21/17) died suddenly, he had begun his fifth “social justice” novel during the span of a ten-year retirement from his career in the building industry. In addition to the novels, he wrote over two hundred blog posts (www.richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/blog) on writing and the promotion of writing, as well as the social justice issues which propelled his stories. At the time of his death, Morris had just completed blog posts related to the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick series on The Vietnam War in which he reviewed each episode, described how his own life fit into the narrative, and commented upon how he and the country had both been on “The Wrong Side of History.” This brought his writing full circle from when he commenced it with a funny but heartrending Cologne No. 10 for Men, which satirized the use of the body count as a means of determining whether your side is winning a war.

In hindsight it may be noted that ten times in his blog posts, Morris wrote about Agent Orange as one of the many lingering tragedies of the Vietnam war. But he never linked to his own narratives that Agent Orange was the presumptive cause of the cancer which had caused his retirement. This was also the cancer that led to an emergency surgery that ended with complications and his death. As part of his writings about war, Morris also produced a CD, Skytroopers: Songs of war, peace, and love from Vietnam (www.cdbaby.com/cd/RichardMorris) of nineteen songs he wrote while serving as a rifle platoon leader with the First Cavalry (Airmobile) Division in Vietnam.

Well Considered and Canoedling in Cleveland were novels Richard Morris wrote which had themes of racial and environmental justice woven into historical thriller and adventure plots. Masjid Morning incorporated Morris’s many years of construction, codes, and zoning experience into an interfaith romance which explores the emotional struggles between religions. Morris’s novels may be found at online bookstores.