A romantic relationship blossomed at the end of the 19th century between an aristocratic woman from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a Syrian itinerant salesman. The affair resulted in the marriage of the two lovers, but not before legal actions, surveillance, arrests and imprisonment were all visited upon the couple, instigated by the woman’s brothers, who were appalled by the idea of their sister marrying a Syrian immigrant. The story became a cause célèbre, drawing the attention of not only local gossips and major American newspapers, but also that of the Lebanese journalist and writer, Salim Sarkis, who immortalized the fraught love affair in Arabic in a book published in New York City in 1904. The book makes compelling reading and is a rich source for the study of Arab immigrant life in the US. It is also one of the earliest Arabic books published in the US. But what makes Sarkis’s book fascinating as a literary work is that it begins as a nonfiction account of the sort one might expect of a journalist telling a factual story. However, after 35 pages in this genre, Sarkis abruptly shifts his style to something quite akin to a nonfiction novel, presenting the remaining 150 pages of his book in this manner. Sarkis’s decision to tell a factual story in novelistic form at this period is groundbreaking. Indeed, in its US context, Sarkis’s work predates by many decades American “New Journalism” and the appearance of nonfiction novels by the likes of John Hersey, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. This paper first describes the tumultuous story of the protagonists’ affair, placing it in the context of Arab immigrant life of the time; it then offers a brief biography of the author, Salim Sarkis; finally, drawing upon research into the genre of nonfiction narrative, United Hearts in the United States is analyzed as a nonfiction novel. The paper argues that Sarkis’s literary approach was unique for—and well ahead of—its time. Reasons for Sarkis’s choice of this genre are also suggested.