Compelling in its cinematic scope-resplendent with the requisite villains and mysterious events infused with sinister and sexual tensions, tragedy, and pathos- Hindiyya's story holds within its folds a larger tale about the construction of a new Christianity in the Levant.

Akram Fouad Khater is professor and director of Middle East studies and of the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 and Sources in the History of the Middle East.