A Girl Made of Dust is a sophisticated exploration of one family's private battle to survive in the midst of civil war. In her peaceful town outside Beirut, Ruba is slowly awakening to the shifting contours within her household: hardly speaking and refusing to work, her father has inexplicably withdrawn from his family; her once-youthful mother looks so sad that Ruba imagines her heart must have withered like a fig in the heat; and Ruba's older brother has begun to secretly meet with older boys