**A schoolteacher still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and
the influenza epidemic travels to the Middle East in this memorable and
passionate novel
**
"Marvelous . . . a stirring story of personal awakening set against
the background of a crucial moment in modern history."--The Washington
Post
Agnes Shanklin, a forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, has come into
a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to
Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the
1921 Cairo Peace Conference convenes, she is freed for the first time
from her mother's withering influence and finds herself being wooed by a
handsome, mysterious German.
At the same time, Agnes--with her plainspoken American opinions--is
drawn into the company of Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady
Gertrude Bell, who will, in the space of a few days, redraw the world
map to create the modern Middle East. As they change history, Agnes too
will find her own life transformed forever.
With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the
Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the
Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today's headlines.