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In the Kingdom of Men - Kim Barnes
In the Kingdom of Men
by: (author)
3.64 35
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,... show more
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.   1967. Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries hometown hero Mason McPhee. Raised in a two-room shack by her Oklahoma grandfather, a strict Methodist minister, Gin never believed that someone like Mason, a handsome college boy, the pride of Shawnee, would look her way. And nothing can prepare her for the world she and Mason step into when he takes a job with the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia. In the gated compound of Abqaiq, Gin and Mason are given a home with marble floors, a houseboy to cook their meals, and a gardener to tend the sandy patch out back. Even among the veiled women and strict laws of shariah, Gin’s life has become the stuff of fairy tales. She buys her first swimsuit, she pierces her ears, and Mason gives her a glittering diamond ring. But when a young Bedouin woman is found dead, washed up on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Gin’s world closes in around her, and the one person she trusts is nowhere to be found.    Set against the gorgeously etched landscape of a country on the cusp of enormous change, In the Kingdom of Men abounds with sandstorms and locust swarms, shrimp peddlers, pearl divers, and Bedouin caravans—a luminous portrait of life in the desert. Award-winning author Kim Barnes weaves a mesmerizing, richly imagined tale of Americans out of their depth in Saudi Arabia, a marriage in peril, and one woman’s quest for the truth, no matter what it might cost her.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN: 9780307273390 (0307273393)
Publisher: Knopf
Pages no: 336
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Books, Books and More Books
Books, Books and More Books rated it
0.0 IN THE KINGDOM OF MEN by Kim Barnes
One of my friends lived in an ARAMCO compound during the 1960’s. The life depicted in THE KINGDOM OF MEN is much as she described it. Gin is running from a constricted life with a fundamentalist grandfather and finds herself living in the even more constricted fundamentalist Saudi kingdom. Even thou...
Get Lost in the Stacks
Get Lost in the Stacks rated it
1.0
Wow... This book was bad... I do not understand why people like it. Whoever wrote the hook for it here on goodreads has some great writing skills because that's now how the book was at all. The mystery of the women washing up on shore didn't even come up until chapter 15 (of a 17 chapter book!). The...
mtw1tter
mtw1tter rated it
3.0 In the Kingdom of Men
Beautifully written but it does reek a little of the whole expat 'we are better' experience, which is probably the tone conveyed in the writing as it is based in the 1970s.
Reflections
Reflections rated it
5.0 In the Kingdom of Men
Born dirt poor in Oklahoma and raised by a Bible strict grandfather, Gin Mitchell trades her dilapidated cage for a gilded one when her young husband takes a job with Arabian American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia. It’s 1967 and Mason is an admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr. and fearless believer in d...
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