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In the Kingdom of Men

by Kim Barnes (Goodreads Author)

3.46 of 5 stars 3.46 · rating details · 1,015 ratings · 250 reviews

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 wh...more

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published May 29th 2012 by Knopf

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Dec 30, 2012 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, chicky, middle-east, new-authors-read, 2009-2012

Virginia lived a life of dark oppression beginning in her childhood and following her as a corporate wife in Saudi Arabia, and thereafter. Unexpectedly, the imagery in Saudi Arabia, while taking place in blinding desert sun, was confining. In addition to a tyrannical culture and people, the activities and even objects and of everyday life seemed to close in. She tries to break free, but cannot until an unexplained tragic event occurs. This was a somewhat dark and apprehensive read. I loved it.

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May 09, 2013 Lisa Carter rated it 5 of 5 stars

LOVED this book - best book I've read in a long time. It's the story of a young woman figuring out who she is and what she wants. At times she seemed selfish and impatient to me and I had to keep reminding myself that she is 18-19 years old and was brought up in extreme poverty and religious austerity. So when she and her husband arrive overseas and he works 2 week tours at a time, she is left to figure out what to do with herself. She can't do housework because that would put out her houseboy (...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Lori Fast rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at random at the library and was very pleasantly surprised. The writing is incredible and I've added the author to my list of people to keep an eye out for... the story was good as far as the characters go. I felt keenly Gin's rebellious nature and how her upbringing in a fundamentalist Pentacostal home impacted how she viewed her life as a wife at loose ends in a compound in Saudi Arabia. I also felt the genuine connection between her and her husband, regardless of the nat...more

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Jan 30, 2013 Julia rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow! This book starts so well. Ginny's voice as narrator is alive and engaging, her childhood is intriguing, there's the promise of a mystery concerning a drowned woman. But the liveliness doesn't last. Ginny is a self-centered character who is near impossible to like and the mystery takes forever to get going before being resolved in a sketchy way without any real answers.

The story is about Ginny's experience living in a compound in Saudi Arabia in 1967 while her husband works for an Arab-Ameri...more Wow! This book starts so well. Ginny's voice as narrator is alive and engaging, her childhood is intriguing, there's the promise of a mystery concerning a drowned woman. But the liveliness doesn't last. Ginny is a self-centered character who is near impossible to like and the mystery takes forever to get going before being resolved in a sketchy way without any real answers.

The story is about Ginny's experience living in a compound in Saudi Arabia in 1967 while her husband works for an Arab-American oil company. "Gin" was raised by her very religious grandfather, gets pregnant young and marries Mason as a way to escape her life. After the loss of the baby, the couple move to a luxurious house in Saudi Arabia where the previously very sheltered Gin evolves almost immediately into someone who chain smokes, drinks heavily, treats others rudely and dresses inappropriately. She expresses a desire to get to know and understand the country better, but does this by ignoring every convention about how women should behave, dressing pretty much as she likes and getting herself into situations that could cause serious problems for the people around her, whose feelings she never takes into account. I heartily disliked her.

I could have tolerated this better - you don't have to like your narrator - if the story had gone somewhere. But the mystery (which concerns her husband investigating corruption in his company) takes forever to get started and then evolves in a very casual way, almost as a throwaway sub-plot while Gin charges around Saudi Arabia breaking conventions left, right and centre. At the end, we find out whose body was in the water (and why), but the way it ties back to the main story is tenuous at best.

What's annoying is that there was so much potential here. Great start, great setting, interesting time in history. It feels like the author was trying to cover too many bases, to write a woman's liberation story combined with a romance combined with a historical evaluation of the US in Saudi Arabia combined with a thriller combined with ... well you get the picture. It's none of these things really. It's readable, but not much more.
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Jan 06, 2013 Bonnie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel by Kim Barnes takes place in 1967 in Oklahoma where Ginny McPhee is being raised in a two room shack by her grandfather after her mother died. The grandfather is a strict Methodist minister who keeps Gin under extreme control which leads her to escape one night, have sex with the local basketball star and find herself pregnant. When her husband finds a job with an Arabian American Oil Company, they move to Saudi Arabia where they move into a house that includes marble floors and a hou...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Lori Kincaid rated it 2 of 5 stars

I heard the author of this book on NPR and thought the subject matter sounded fascinating. I was disappointed. I didn't like the character of Gin. I don't believe the author did a good job of developing the character, and I found her to be flat/two-dimensional. Imho, Gin came off as grossly naive and immature.

The fact that the real action of the book didn't occur until the last 50 pages was terribly disappointing. I kept thinking, "get on with it already." And then it seemed as if the author co...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Malda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

The story is based in the 50′s, a time when feminism was still a thought in the minds of aspiring feminists and everyone was accustomed to living a man’s world. The setting is in two completely different locations that interestingly enough are more alike in their lack of freedom than one might expect. The author starts out the story in conservative Texas by introducing us to a young girl, Gin, who is raised by her strict grandfather who imposes on her his oppressive beliefs. Because of those res...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Jo at Jaffareadstoo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Taken from the city orphanage as a seven year old, and raised by her fanatical Methodist grandfather, Virginia “Gin” Mae Mitchell has a harsh and troubled early life. When in her mid teens she rebels against this severe upbringing, and determined to leave her grandfather, she uses marriage to Mason McPhee as her escape. When Mason accepts a job working for the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia, both he and Gin struggle to conform and adjust to a new way of life. As Mason begins life o...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Elaine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Set in the late 1960's, a young woman, Gin, raised by her extremely religious grandfather in a small town in Oklahoma marries and goes to Saudi Arabia with her husband when is transferred there by his employer, an American oil company. Stifled by religious, cultural corporate rules that keep her contained, she seeks to fulfill her need for adventure. Her husband, an admirer of Martin Luther King, apends weeks at a time away from the company compound working on an oil rig with an international cr...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Jaylia3 rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 doing what’s right, which earns him respect but also enemies in a company whose policies dictate that native brown skinned workers are necessarily inferior.

Stuck inside the luxurious home and walled c...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Claire rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was so excited to read this one after I had downloaded the sample. And in the beginning, this story of a poor Oklahoma girl who marries and moves to Saudi Arabia with her oil worker husband, really sang. Virginia Mae McPhee (Gin) is the daughter of strong women. Her grandmother walks out on her preacher grandfather to make a better life for herself and her own daughter, Gin's mother. Gin lives with these two female influences until both her mother and grandmother die. At that point, she is for...more I was so excited to read this one after I had downloaded the sample. And in the beginning, this story of a poor Oklahoma girl who marries and moves to Saudi Arabia with her oil worker husband, really sang. Virginia Mae McPhee (Gin) is the daughter of strong women. Her grandmother walks out on her preacher grandfather to make a better life for herself and her own daughter, Gin's mother. Gin lives with these two female influences until both her mother and grandmother die. At that point, she is forced to live with her only relative, her hardscrabble grandfather. Intensely religious, he whips Gin for cutting the sleeves off a dress during the heat of summer. Her grandfather tries to raise her to be what he believes God wants: modest, pure and faithful.

But Gin has other ideas, and really begins her life when she falls for a high school football star and sleeps with him, getting pregnant. The football player, Mason, does right by her and marries her. They move from Oklahoma to Houston, Texas, where Mason works in the oil fields. They lose the baby, and Gin is told she cannot have another child. She and Mason are despondent, until another chance comes along for them. Mason is soon picked to become part of Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Company, and is asked to move to Saudi Arabia. I was especially interested in this since at my Texas school a number of our boarding students had parents who were also Aramco workers.

Unfortunately, this was where the book fell apart for me. Gin and Mason move to Arabia, where they inherit the house of a well-liked couple who suddenly disappeared from the Aramco compound. Gin forms friendships with all kinds of "inappropriate" people - Ruthie, the Jewish wife of one of Mason's co-workers; her houseboy, Yash; a Bedouin driver, Abdullah; his family; and a wonderful piratical photographer, Carlo. Along the way, Gin learns to be a photographer herself, and she and Mason become embroiled in an enormous scandal.

Sounds pretty good, right? But no. Does Gin really love Mason, or was he just her ticket out of her life with her grandfather? Was her grandfather as hard a man as we were led to believe in the beginning of the book? What does she feel for Yash? For Abdullah? What attracts her to the desert and the people of Arabia? We know nothing about her thought process, really, as she behaves in a completely inconsistent manner and seems to bounce from one crazy circumstance to the next, with no resolution involved. The author is a wonderful writer, and I will look forward to reading more from her. But I was disappointed in the contrast between the promise of the beginning of the book, and the way it simply seemed to go awry as Gin's actions and emotions became increasingly inconsistent.(less)

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Jul 28, 2012 Marcia rated it 2 of 5 stars

I find it hard to rate this book. I recently heard the author read the first paragraph on the Diane Rehm Show and I don't feel that the subsequent story met its goal with regard to the mystery of the dead sister of Abdullah. Perhaps this is due to the confusing plot that I found hard to follow, when Gin's husband went off in search of truth and justice, as well as the amount of time it took to introduce the sister of Abdullah. Or maybe the point was to show just how incredibly naive and foolish...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Gin and Mason McPhee leave their dirt poor pasts behind for an opportunity to live in a "protected community" in Saudi Arabi in the 1960's, under the arm of the real-life company that existed at that time known as "Aramco".

The company gives them a palatial home with a dedicated and trusted houseboy. The community has everything they need: Recreation center with a pool, schools, hospital, and police force. Mason works on a platform rig on the sea, and is gone for two weeks, then home for two.

Gi...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Larraine rated it 5 of 5 stars

The cover for this book shows a woman's hands neatly folded, the neails perfect, the clothing tasteful, but there is no face. The book introduces us to Virginia "Gin" McPhee who only wants to "know." It takes places in 1970, just when women's liberation was getting started. It was a time when an employer could ask when you were planning to get pregnant.

After losing both her grandmother (who left her husband as a young woman and raised Gin's mother alone) and her mother, Gin is sent to live with...more The cover for this book shows a woman's hands neatly folded, the neails perfect, the clothing tasteful, but there is no face. The book introduces us to Virginia "Gin" McPhee who only wants to "know." It takes places in 1970, just when women's liberation was getting started. It was a time when an employer could ask when you were planning to get pregnant.

After losing both her grandmother (who left her husband as a young woman and raised Gin's mother alone) and her mother, Gin is sent to live with that same grandfather, a strict Methodist preacher who beats her and constantly calls her a sinner while loving her in his own way. She rebels and falls for Mason, the high school jock. They conceive a child, and he immediately makes the decision to marry her which means losing his basketball scholarship. He takes a job with an oil company in Texas where their child is born prematurely and dies. Gin is also told she can no longer conceive.

They are still very young, but Mason is offered a job with ARAMCO, an oil company in Saudi Arabia. The money is great and includes free housing in a company compound. There's only one catch: there's absolutely no freedom for women and very few places where she can go and satisfy the increasing curiosity about her world. When they arrive in "Arabia" as they call it, they have a completely furnished home with a houseboy and gardener. Gin is bored quickly. She's not interested in drinking and gossip. In addition, Mason soon learns that shortcuts are being taken which causes needless accidents.

I sympathize and understand Gin having grown up at this time. Women were expected to take a back seat when it came to ambition. In fact, if you were curious and driven, you were looked upon with suspicion. To some extent, that's still true for women although it's a lot better than it was.

The language in this book is full of incredibly imagery, some of it romantic, some of it seamy. The end is jolting and incredibly sad, but, once again, the language is so wonderful, I can forgive anything. (less)

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Jun 11, 2012 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: school

This one is the real deal. Kim Barnes writes a drop dead gorgeous novel set in 1967 Arabia. Narrator Virginia "Gin" McPhee is a dirt poor orphan from rural Oklahoma who winds up in one of the Americanized oil compounds in the Saudi desert with her high school sweetheart, Mason. "The education of Mrs. Gin" that takes place once she arrives in this exotic and paradoxical place is languorous, poignant, cringe-inducing, and violent by turns. Barnes successfully fuses a captivating fiction narrative...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, midcentury, read-in-2012

I saw this book described as "Mad Men meets The Sheltering Sky." I've never actually read The Sheltering Sky, or watched Mad Men, but I'm pretty sure I get the gist. If this means it's American optimism and hubris in the Middle East meets midcentury modern style, killer clothes and sexism, then yes, that is just what this is. The writing is very nice, and there is a great thread of tension throughout that keeps the pages moving quickly, but everything takes a back seat to the mesmerizing setting...more

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Oct 10, 2012 Alesa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a novel about Aramco, the oil company in Saudi Arabia with which I was an oil wife for five years. The story takes place in the late 1960s, about 12 years before my time. It is set in Abqaiq, where I lived for three months. So everything about it was really familiar to me.

The author does a very good job of describing life in an oil camp, and the odd sense of danger one feels most of the time while living in the Kingdom. She has great details. Sometimes I felt like she was overwriting, in...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Kay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

A glimpse into the strange cocoon that was life for the families of Americans sent to work in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia during the 1960's. The narrator is a plucky young woman whose hard-scrabble existence in Oklahoma is in stark contrast to the lap of luxury created in the desert for the wives of the oil drillers. Her new husband takes the job because he sees it as the only way for the two of them to break into the middle class.

Two things struck me about this book. The first is that the h...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Holly S. Warah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I got pulled into this story right away. On the surface, it's a kind of Mad Men Meets Aramco--1967 Americans drinking cocktails in an expat compound in Saudi Arabia. The book is well-researched, and author captures well the expat lifestyle of isolation, over-indulgence & busybody expat women.

I had been hesitant to read this book because the author had never been to Saudi Arabia. I did find the Arab character Abdullah and the Indian cook Yash to be both be "off" in behavior and especially in...more

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Dec 13, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

Virginia (“Gin”) Mitchell, raised by her extremely religious grandfather in Oklahoma, is a woman with a strong sense of adventure. But, despite her good fortune and achievements (she marries the high school ‘hunk’, Mason McPhee and they move to Saudi Arabia after her husband lands a job with the Arabian American Oil Company “Aramco”), her life is stifled by the ‘rules’ of the culture and the expectations set by her husband to obey them.

(view spoiler)...more Virginia (“Gin”) Mitchell, raised by her extremely religious grandfather in Oklahoma, is a woman with a strong sense of adventure. But, despite her good fortune and achievements (she marries the high school ‘hunk’, Mason McPhee and they move to Saudi Arabia after her husband lands a job with the Arabian American Oil Company “Aramco”), her life is stifled by the ‘rules’ of the culture and the expectations set by her husband to obey them.

(view spoiler)

In the Kingdom of Men is a fast paced and very enjoyable read that depicts the restricted, almost ‘artificial life’ on the Abqaiq compound in Saudi Arabia during the 1960’s and the education of Virginia Mitchell McPhee, a ‘barefoot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma’ who finds herself trying to satisfy her sense of adventure while at the same time, find the strength within when life presents what appear to be insurmountable challenges.
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May 29, 2012 4cats rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own

Set against the mesmerizing backdrop of Saudi Arabia in the late sixties, Kim Barnes transplants Gin a girl who has grown up in abject poverty and isolation (due to her grandsfather's strict methodist upbringing) to the bewildering country of Saudi Arabia where wealth, power and control are enmeshed together and women are to be seen but not heard. She and her husband Mason move to this strange land to escape their past life in America and find themselves living a life of privilege where all of t...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am not sorry I read this. I felt I learned a little about the Arab - American relationship concerning oil in spite of our friendship with Israel. I did not dislike Gin and the character development specifically within her marital relationship (love / loss).

At one point there was mention of the garden of Eden. Women's curiosity got us booted from the garden, but was it because we sinned or because we would have eventually eaten from the tree of life as well. Within the context of the story, I...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Sam Woodfield rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So I'm a little confused about how I feel about this novel, being unsure if I enjoyed it or not, and thats quite an unusual feeling having just read a book - I normally know what I think and find it easy to say if I like it or not, but this has confused me.
The novel follows Gin McPhee and her husband Mason as they move from middle America to Arabia in the early days of oil drilling in the Gulf. As Mason is away for long periods on the rig, Gin has to adjust to life as an American wife in an Isla...more So I'm a little confused about how I feel about this novel, being unsure if I enjoyed it or not, and thats quite an unusual feeling having just read a book - I normally know what I think and find it easy to say if I like it or not, but this has confused me.
The novel follows Gin McPhee and her husband Mason as they move from middle America to Arabia in the early days of oil drilling in the Gulf. As Mason is away for long periods on the rig, Gin has to adjust to life as an American wife in an Islamic state, and the confinement this brings. However, unhappy with being cooped up in a compound, Gin begins to push the limits of what she can get away with, and finds herself, and those around them in trouble, and as Mason uncovers dodgy dealings within the oil company, things take a turn which will change their lives forever.
The start of this novel is full of promise. The opening lines of "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 said she did" really set this up to be a gripping novel, with elements of murder mystery throughout, and I was really excited by the prospect of reading the novel. So when I got half way through and had no whif of mystery I started to wain a little, three-quarters of the way and I was almost disengaged. So when there finally was some twist to the story, I was not interested and really disappointed with the course it took.
But here is my confusion - I really loved the characters in this novel. I thought Gin was a really interesting woman, and those people around her within the compound - the other wives, the houseboys and Bedouin men - were really fascinating and really drew me into life within the compound. I thought the detail of life for women within that environment was really interesting, and the ways in which Gin pushed the boundaries of women can and can't do really got me interested in the story. I loved it!
So for me, the issue with this novel is the promise that the opening brings which takes so long to materialise it's flat when it does, because without this, it's a really brillinat novel about the lives of women in that time and place and is really engaging. I think the twist would work if it weren't for the promise of so much. And so thats why I'm confused, because I loved this novel but at the same time really felt disappointed.(less)

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Aug 13, 2012 Evan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction, lovestory, adventure, comingofage, saudiarabia, strongwomen

My introduction to this book was through an NPR interview with the author. I really connected with the things she was saying about her life in general, though our early lives were nothing alike. Not only did I know that she would be a prolific writer, and she is- using lyrically beautiful phrases that have an almost heart-wrenching clarity, but her ability as a storyteller is almost unmatched by anything I've read lately.
'In the Kingdom of Men' is a fictional tale that, in some truth, describ...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

This begins as a sweeping tale of a backwater Oklahoma girl that ends up in Saudi Arabia with her husband working for an American oil company. Her story is very compelling and keeps you wanting to read more. There are several very interesting characters she encounters in Saudi Arabia and not just a love triangle but really almost a quadrangle (is that really a word?) So I was voraciously reading to see how this would all be resolved and who she would end up with and I was quite disappointed in t...more

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Jul 29, 2012 Sacha rated it 2 of 5 stars

Virginia “Gin” Mitchell is a dreamer but life on a rural Oklahoma farm in 1968 is no fairy tale world, especially with a fundamentalist grandfather who finds infraction of religious law at every turn. When she ends up pregnant by local boy Mason McPhee, Gin is shunned and finds herself no better off in her new life with her new husband in Houston, TX. Impoverished and desperate to improve their situation, Mason takes a job overseas with an oil company, one located in the arid and isolated desert...more Virginia “Gin” Mitchell is a dreamer but life on a rural Oklahoma farm in 1968 is no fairy tale world, especially with a fundamentalist grandfather who finds infraction of religious law at every turn. When she ends up pregnant by local boy Mason McPhee, Gin is shunned and finds herself no better off in her new life with her new husband in Houston, TX. Impoverished and desperate to improve their situation, Mason takes a job overseas with an oil company, one located in the arid and isolated deserts of Saudi Arabia. It is here among haboobs and locust plagues that Gin comes of age and learns that the freedom and adventure she craves will continue to elude her and, once obtained, come at great price.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Kim Barnes describes “In The Kingdom of Men” as “part cautionary tale, part adventure story”. The novel feels like a veiled treatise on feminism and religion. The author has many feelings about the latter – she ran away from home and a devout Pentecostal fundamentalist father twice in her youth. What she hasn’t lived is the oil compound life, and her information is culled from her aunt and uncle, employed and housed by Aramco in the 1960’s. I found her interview on The Diane Rehm Show and her musings on her book and her own life more interesting than the book itself.

Her story arc is limp. The vast majority of the book is spent developing Gin and her relationships with the other characters. Gin’s naiveté and repression at the hands of her grandfather make her easy to root for in the beginning but her sudden change in demeanor and scant education on life beyond the Abqaiq compound damages her character growth. She goes from one insular lifestyle to another and though she breaks free from time to time, it’s not enough to mature her. Mason is a hard character to understand or sympathize with because, like Gin, the reader is as in the dark as her about what goes on in his head and at his job. His sudden leap into company politics is far-fetched. The relationship between Gin and Abdullah the Bedouin is a curious one; Barnes teases the reader with romantic undertones only to leave them lie at book’s end. Her friendship with Yash the Punjabi houseboy is an odd one too – it’s so mentor/student that it’s cliché. And while we’re on the subject of clichés, her inexplicably instantaneous rapport with Ruthie Doucet reeks of them - naïve and socially inept fundamentalist Christian country bumpkin befriends brash, outspoken, hard drinking, chain smoking modern and pampered Jewish woman.

By the time Barnes gets down to brass tacks, the novel is nearly at its end. **SPOILER ALERT** It is implied in the book’s opening passage that Mason is blamed for a woman’s death but the reader never learns what becomes of him or Ruthie’s husband Lucky. Gin ends up a peripatetic and woeful woman, wandering a country in which she never intended to be. There is zero closure, nothing and no one to solve the mystery hinted at in the beginning. It is the book’s biggest failure. **END SPOILERS**

I was really hoping I would find a gem in “The Kingdom of Men”. I delight in finding those diamonds in the rough that don’t get the publicity of other books and of being the one who spreads the word about them. Unfortunately, the only thing worth mentioning regarding this novel is Barnes’s adeptness at description and setting and it is not enough to save a sagging story. Not recommended.(less)

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Apr 22, 2013 Makereta rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book precisely because the character of Gin is not superwoman. I really think there ought to be a sequel. Gin is a very ordinary young woman, a victim of her own experience - good-hearted, damaged, not very well educated, and naive. Metamorphasising from fundamentalist-raised-Oklahoma-girl to oil-company-compound wife-complete-with-servants-and-mini-palace is a clumsy process for small-town Gin who wavers throughout the story between boredom, timidity, and perceptiveness (the latter...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Tia Jensen rated it 2 of 5 stars

It felt like the author had a couple of books in mind and she had to put them together. The story in the beginning felt like it was being told differently and didn't match in my mind the story of the oil fields. There was a disconnect for me. I didn't like the protagonist. I found her selfish and shallow. There was too often foreshadowing or clues that were put in that I would have rather not known. Don't mention for instance when you know it's going to be the last time you see someone early on...more

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Feb 06, 2013 The Book Maven rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literaryfiction

When Ginny--the granddaughter of a poor, backwoods, Evangelical preacher--marries the town dreamboat Mason McPhee, her fortunes begin to improve and her horizons begin to expand. Soon they've expanded beyond her wildest dreams, for she and Mason find themselves living in a posh American compound in Saudi Arabia, where Mason is on the fast-track for an oil-executive job.

What appears first as an adventure becomes more of a misadventure when Mason and Ginny begin to butt heads against the racism i...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Vern rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-books

"The fact is that you are a woman, and in possession of great power(274)." -Yash

Virginia Mae Mitchell was orphaned when her mother and grandmother passed. At age seven she was picked up from the orphanage by the man her grandmother and mother had left years ago, a Bible beating tyrant known as her grandfather. Gin grew up plain and poor. She never really gave over to her grandfather's faith even though she was bound by its rules. She found characters in books her best companions. Plain and obscu...more "The fact is that you are a woman, and in possession of great power(274)." -Yash

Virginia Mae Mitchell was orphaned when her mother and grandmother passed. At age seven she was picked up from the orphanage by the man her grandmother and mother had left years ago, a Bible beating tyrant known as her grandfather. Gin grew up plain and poor. She never really gave over to her grandfather's faith even though she was bound by its rules. She found characters in books her best companions. Plain and obscure yet she managed to catch the eye and heart of the hometown hero, Mason McPhee. Gin as well as her grandfather soon found out she was expecting. The hero came to her rescue. They got married but the happily ever after never came. The birth was still and so was Gin. Mason wanted to make it all better. Mason's saviour's complex landed them in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. A whole new word.

Mason began working for the Arabian Oil Company, Aramco and Gin was supposed to sit around and be the pampered wife. They arrived to a perfectly well boxed life in Abqaiq. A home with all the amenitites including a houseboy/servant, Yash Sharma. There was also a driver, Abdullah. Gin soon found a BFF in a fellow Aramco wife, Ruthie. There remained one constant in Saudi Arabia that Gin was familiar with from her days in Oklahoma, women had to abide by the rules set by the men.

Gin was one to test the boundaries but she really didn't have the courage to cross any. Mason's saviour complex proved that there was no resurrection of mortal gods. Everyone needs a friend like Yash. You miss him for days after you finish the book. Ruthie is that friend liken to Bette Midler's character in the movie "Beaches." Barnes made you feel the sand and the sun on your skin. You felt the restrictions of the society. The Bedouin culture was well researched and made interesting. There is also a pirate who is really a photographer, Carlo. His charm will make you smile life.

The ending is still with me. The complexity of the narrative and the magnitude of the issues Barnes dealt with I'm yet unraveling. A real story. More than fiction. I can't say enough about Yash. (less)

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About Kim Barnes

I was born in Lewiston, Idaho, in 1958, and one week later, I returned with my mother to our small line-shack on Orofino Creek, where my father worked as a gyppo logger. The majority of my childhood was spent with my younger brother, Greg, in the isolated settlements and cedar camps along the North Fork of Idaho’s Clearwater River. I was the first member of my family to attend college. I hold a BA...more

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Books by Kim Barnes

In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country

Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes From the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty

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In the Kingdom of Men

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