Noa Avishag Schnall’s debut book, Homebound, is both a travel memoir and a photographic account of a solo road trip across Oman, during which she slept each night in her car.

What begins as a post-quarantine release—an intrepid journey along the coastline and open landscapes of the southern Arabian Peninsula, a region tied to Schnall’s maternal lineage in Yemen—evolves into a deeply personal exploration. As she travels across Oman and encounters a spectrum of people and experiences, Schnall begins to see how closely the personal, familial, and political intertwine. Meetings with strangers spark family memories and meditations on the consequences of an absence of community and the evolving meaning of home.

In Homebound, every mile traveled deepens Schnall’s connection to her roots and becomes a powerful act of self-discovery. Her photography captures the lands, sands, and people of Oman, while her writing reveals a more intimate story of emotional landscapes and identities straddling past and present at every turn.