From the PEN USA Award-winning author of A Country Called Home, a richly imagined new novel about a young woman who leaves the dusty farmland of 1960s Oklahoma to follow her husband to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, where she finds a world of wealth, glamour, American privilege, and corruption...
"KIM BARNES has created a heroine for the ages in Gin McPhee--fierce, sad and tenacious... In the
Kingdom of Men is a gripping thriller..."
--Pam Houston
_____________________________________________________________
Here is the first thing you need to know about me: I’m a barefoot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma, and all the marble floors in the world will never change that.
Here is the second thing: That young woman they pulled from the Arabian shore, her hair tangled with mangrove—my husband didn’t kill her, not the way they say he did...
____________________________________________________________
~Named a Best Book of 2012 by San Francisco Chronicle and The Seattle Times~
_____________________________________________________________
~Waterstones UK Book Club Selection~
_____________________________________________________________
Click here to listen to Kim's interview on THE DIANE REHM SHOW
_____________________________________________________________
"KIM BARNES has created a heroine for the ages in Gin McPhee--fierce, sad and tenacious... In the Kingdom of Men is a gripping thriller..." --Pam Houston, More Magazine
“Drawn with skill and filled with evocative period detail...The plot is unfurled like a rich carpet, rolling out over a vast space before it gently settles and fills every corner. Barnes...gets more motion and feeling into a deceptively plain paragraph than many novelists can cram into a chapter. She ensures that Gin’s evolution is authentic, a wary, quiet observer and survivor who plumbs the depths of her new world with heart and courage. The women who populate this novel are all heroic in their various ways, a wonderful juxtaposition alongside this man’s world build by oil money.” –Kimberly Marlowe Harnett, The Seattle Times
“With courage and zest, Kim Barnes’ novel In the Kingdom of Men takes an intimate look at … the rarified and harshly beautiful world of eastern Saudi Arabia…. Her Americans are loud and sharp and leaping from the page, casually refilling their cocktail glasses and whooping it up at the Beachcomber’s Ball, some joyfully, some desperately, but all clinging to their own habits while betraying a general disconnection from—and disregard for—the Arabia all around them. And that disregard leads to the dark, tragic heart of the novel…. Within these lyrical pages is a story well worth investigating.” —Zoe Ferraris, San Francisco Chronicle
“Barnes’s dramatic powers are sure-footed and surely lyrical…. An ambitious amalgam of sexism, racism, corporate colonialism, culture clash, class issues, religion, love and marriage, grief and loss.” —Kassten Alonso, The Oregonian
* “Barnes brings her own childhood struggles with a strict, isolating Pentecostalism to her enrapturing third novel about a tough, fearless Oklahoma girl raised with religious austerity and misogyny, who finds herself living in a luxurious yet oppressive American oil company enclave in 1970 in Saudi Arabia. . . . Barnes animates a magnetizing cast of cosmopolitan characters, lingers over descriptions of food and clothing, dramatizes cultural contrasts and sexual tension, and brings this intense and compassionate novel of corporate imperialism, prejudice, corruption, and yearning to such gorgeously vivid, suspenseful life that the story’s darkness is perfectly balanced by the keen wit and blazing pleasure of its telling. A veritable Mad Men of the desert, with the depth of a Graham Greene novel.” --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
* “An immersive and bracing exploration of one woman’s search for freedom amid repression. . . . Gin is a delightful heroine whose tenacity animates those around her, a quality that lays the groundwork for an extraordinary adventure and unsettling conclusion. Barnes deftly teases humanity out of corruption and hypocrisy, and her language is finely wrought and her pacing masterful—Gin’s story develops languidly, then draws taut as the stakes rise.” --Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)
“Addictive . . . Barnes’s sweeping drama takes the reader on a captivating journey from rural Oklahoma to Saudi Arabia.” --Julia Edelstein, Real Simple
“When her husband Mason gets a job with Aramco, Oklahoman Gin McPhee moves from small-town life to a wider—and wilder—world of privilege, corruption and Middle Eastern geopolitics in the 1960s. . . . Barnes writes poetically and intensely about personal conflict and subtly informs the reader about continuing western misunderstandings of Middle Eastern culture.” --Kirkus Reviews
"If you want to understand, right in your gut, the history of the American relationship with Saudi Arabia; if you want a magical, layered story of the west-inside-east...and the slow--still ongoing--revolution of gender and race oppression, In the Kingdom of Men is your book. It's Mad Men meets The Sheltering Sky, a Revolutionary Road for the oil-addicted. It's also an utter pleasure to read."
--Anthony Doerr, author of Memory Wall and About Grace
"A swashbuckling, thrilling ride of a book, In The Kingdom of Men transports readers to the sands of Arabia and the recesses of the human heart. Ginny McPhee is a heroine unlike any other, negotiating love, politics, the intricacies of marriage, and the journey to self-hood. A vivid and compelling tale."--Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Birds of Paradise
"This novel has it all: an intriguing story that thunders to a thrilling climax, characters who grab our hearts, gorgeous prose, and a setting that stuns the reader at every turn. Arabia!"
--Ellen Sussman, author of French Lessons
"I was transfixed by Kim Barnes’ thoughtful, elegant account of a young American woman's experience of 1960's Saudi Arabia. It describes a piece of the world that seems utterly fresh, never-written-about, and In the Kingdom of Men brings it to vivid life. This is a historical novel which is not only romantic and dramatic and compelling but has particular, important relevance to our current age."
--Dan Chaon, author of Stay Awake and Await Your Reply
"A great windswept adventure, full of tension and suspense, In the Kingdom of Men is moving in the truest sense, sweeping the reader along with its gorgeous prose, a rich setting, and most of all, Gin McPhee, one of those rare characters who sits up on page one, grabs you, and pulls you into her world."
--Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets
"This is a mesmerizing novel, set in the American heartland and Saudi Arabia--two locations that on the face of it couldn't be more different. But from the point of view of a woman not allowed to be herself, the two places have startling similarities. We read, in part, to be taken elsewhere. In the Kingdom of Men succeeds mightily in this. We also read because we enjoy good writing. You'll find that in abundance here."
--Elizabeth Berg, author of Once Upon a Time There Was You
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The voice of Gin McPhee (although I didn't know who she was then) came to me as I sat in the home of my aunt, where we were surrounded by the mementos of her years living in 1960s Saudi Arabia. Ornate camel saddles, brass lamps, intricately woven textiles—all in stark contrast to the trappings of her life growing up as the daughter of an Oklahoma sharecropper, her days defined by the poverty that blew in with the Dust Bowl and stayed. When my aunt married my uncle, a handsome oilfield roughneck who worked for Halliburton and was recruited by the Arabian American Oil Company, her life changed in ways she never could have imagined.
In order to develop the massive oilfields of Arabia, Aramco imported workers from all over the world, including Americans, who were given segregated housing in three gated communities, each built to replicate the middle-class dream they were seeking: swimming pools, top schools, and the best medical care money could buy. “I never thought I’d belong to a yacht club,” my aunt told me, “but in Arabia, I did.” Inside the American "camps," the women swam laps in trendy swimsuits and often gathered for cocktails dressed in designer gowns, their meals served to them by houseboys. What they could not do was drive outside those gates, where a modified version of shariah law governed when, where, how, and with whom they could be seen.
The more I listened to the stories my aunt and uncle told me, the more my imagination began conjuring possibilities. “What about an American man and an Arabian woman?” I asked. “Could that kind of relationship have happened?” Not easily, they agreed, but they had heard that Aramco men sometimes did get into “trouble.” Honor killings and blood revenge were (and still are) a fact of Saudi life, and Aramco would “hospitalize” the male offender under armed guard until he could be secreted out of the country. "What about the woman?" I asked, and we all grew quiet because we knew what the answer would be.
Aramcons, as they called themselves, worked for the largest oil company in the world and lived inside closed compounds inside a closed culture inside a closed country, yet, as my uncle said, "They had more money than they knew what to do with." Aramco had kept its image whitewashed and spit-shined, but it wasn't difficult to understand how corporate power and sudden wealth might lead to corruption and deceit. What if an American worker came across a secret that threatened Aramco’s role in Arabia? I wondered. And what about the woman's voice I had heard in my head? What was she trying to tell about that dead girl found washed up on shores of the Arabian sea?
Over the past five years, that voice has grown into the narration of Gin McPhee, who recounts for us how her dream of a better life turned into a nightmare of fear and confusion. A mix of adventure story and cautionary tale, In the Kingdom of Men details the love and loss that scarred and shaped her and, finally, gave her what she needed to survive.
I know now why her voice wouldn't leave me.
She is a part of who I am.
Kim Barnes
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In order to develop the massive oilfields of Arabia, Aramco imported workers from all over the world, including Americans, who were given segregated housing in three gated communities, each built to replicate the middle-class dream they were seeking: swimming pools, top schools, and the best medical care money could buy. “I never thought I’d belong to a yacht club,” my aunt told me, “but in Arabia, I did.” Inside the American "camps," the women swam laps in trendy swimsuits and often gathered for cocktails dressed in designer gowns, their meals served to them by houseboys. What they could not do was drive outside those gates, where a modified version of shariah law governed when, where, how, and with whom they could be seen.
The more I listened to the stories my aunt and uncle told me, the more my imagination began conjuring possibilities. “What about an American man and an Arabian woman?” I asked. “Could that kind of relationship have happened?” Not easily, they agreed, but they had heard that Aramco men sometimes did get into “trouble.” Honor killings and blood revenge were (and still are) a fact of Saudi life, and Aramco would “hospitalize” the male offender under armed guard until he could be secreted out of the country. "What about the woman?" I asked, and we all grew quiet because we knew what the answer would be.
Aramcons, as they called themselves, worked for the largest oil company in the world and lived inside closed compounds inside a closed culture inside a closed country, yet, as my uncle said, "They had more money than they knew what to do with." Aramco had kept its image whitewashed and spit-shined, but it wasn't difficult to understand how corporate power and sudden wealth might lead to corruption and deceit. What if an American worker came across a secret that threatened Aramco’s role in Arabia? I wondered. And what about the woman's voice I had heard in my head? What was she trying to tell about that dead girl found washed up on shores of the Arabian sea?
Over the past five years, that voice has grown into the narration of Gin McPhee, who recounts for us how her dream of a better life turned into a nightmare of fear and confusion. A mix of adventure story and cautionary tale, In the Kingdom of Men details the love and loss that scarred and shaped her and, finally, gave her what she needed to survive.
I know now why her voice wouldn't leave me.
She is a part of who I am.
Kim Barnes
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________