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author-
armchair-
-arabist
-angler
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coming in may 2012
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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
and finds a world of wealth, glamour, American privilege, and corruption.
"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."
"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, culture layered over culture, and the slow--still ongoing--revolution of gender and race oppression, In the Kingdom of Men is your book. It's Madmen 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
"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
"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
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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
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
January 21, 2012
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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
January 21, 2012
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