Fania, the sur­vivor of a pogrom in the Ukraine, arrives in Israel preg­nant as the result of a rape. She is with her uncle and men­tal­ly ill broth­er. At six­teen, she must make deci­sions to enable her to sur­vive. So she mar­ries Yehiel, a young wid­ow­er and the father of two chil­dren. With him, she trav­els to Gai Oni, the Val­ley of Strength, along with her broth­er and infant. 

The author fol­lows Fania as she over­comes obsta­cles and crises in both her per­son­al life and in the life of the set­tle­ment of Gai Oni. She illus­trates the stress of liv­ing in an untamed area in the Galilee, the rela­tion­ships between new immi­grants and Jew­ish set­tlers who have been in Israel for gen­er­a­tions, the rela­tion­ship between set­tlers and fun­ders, and the rela­tion­ship between Jews and Mus­lims. Gai Oni becomes the town of Rosh Pin­na in spite of many difficulties.

Through this book, read­ers are able to envi­sion the life of Israeli pio­neers as they strug­gled to sur­vive in a bar­ren land and a land teem­ing with malaria. 

This his­tor­i­cal nov­el pro­vides an excel­lent glimpse into this world. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to read about the role of women in help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty grow. It was a tru­ly dif­fi­cult sur­vival for these ear­ly set­tlers. How­ev­er, the ​‘love sto­ry’ com­po­nent seemed stilted. 

Although only recent­ly trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, Val­ley of Strength, was one of Lapid’s ear­li­est nov­els, writ­ten in 1982.