In the Kingdom of Men

In the Kingdom of Men Kim Barnes is the author of two memoirs and two previous novels, including A Country Called Home , which received the 2009 PEN Center USA Literary Award in fiction and was named a best book of 2008 by The Washington Post , the Kansas City Star and The Oregonian . She is the recipient of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award for an emerging woman writer of non-fiction, and her first memoir, In the Wilderness , was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in a number of publi - cations and anthologies, including the New York Times ; MORE magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine ; Good Housekeeping ; Fourth Genre ; The Georgia Review ; Shenandoah ; and the Push - cart Prize anthology. Barnes is a professor of writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain. ALSO BY KIM BARNES FICTION A Country Called Home Finding Caruso NON-FICTION In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country Hungry for the World: A Memoir Praise for In the Kingdom of Men ‘Arresting . A richly wrought historical novel . Barnes seems incapable of writing a lazy sentence. It would be easy enough to enjoy her novel for its images alone — Gin learning to roast coffee beans over an open fire and milk camels straight into enamel bowls; the local children who line their eyes with kohl and drip with precious stones — but its feats are more than just descriptive. We have here the portrait of a woman whose ambitions outsize the time and place she lives, and also of what happens to a marriage when taken out of a familiar context. In the Kingdom of Men, in many ways, is a close inspection of how radically a life can be rescaled, and how quickly. With a protagonist like this, Barnes could have set her novel in a single room, and we’d keep reading.’ The Boston Globe ‘With courage and zest, Kim Barnes’s 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.’ San Francisco Chronicle ‘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.’ The Seattle Times ‘Lyrical . It takes guts to title a novel after a line from the Bible — “the Most high rules in the kingdom of men”— and then to begin Chapter 1 with possibly the most famous biblical reference available: “In the beginning.” Following through, Kim Barnes casts her protagonist and narrator, a young American girl called Gin, in the image of a certain female character from a certain creation myth . In the Kingdom of Men [is] something more than a novel about an Okie who causes trouble in a foreign land. It’s that, and a feminist bildungsroman.’ The New York Times Book Review ‘In the Kingdom of Men resembles Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills as much as any other book. The men run the administration of a society made up of darker-skinned and, by definition, inferior people, but the women run the white-skinned men, casting an invisible but exceedingly strong net over the group. The menus here are . so enticing that you’ll want to stop reading for a while and put together a sumptuous dinner . A culturally complex story about American venality and greed.’ The Washington Post ‘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.’ The Oregonian ‘Kim Barnes has created a heroine for the ages in Gin McPhee — fierce, sad and tenacious, a self-described “barefoot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma” who is consumed with the desire to see and know everything going on outside the country-club- esque compound in the vast Arabian Desert where, against all odds, she has found herself living. In the Kingdom of Men is a gripping thriller that plays out amid the oil-inflected relationships of the Americans and the Saudis (further complicated by the Bedouins and the Indians who serve them both) in the moody landscape of the Arabian frontier.’ MORe Magazine ‘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.’ 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 review) ‘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 ‘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 selfhood. 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 In the Kingdom of Men KIM BARNES Published by Windmill Books 2013 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Copyright © Kim Barnes 2012 Kim Barnes has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Hutchinson Windmill Books The Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009 www.randomhouse.co.uk A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9780099559276 The Random House Group Limited supports the Forest Stewardship Council ® (FSC ®), the leading international forest-certification organisation. Our books carrying the FSC label are printed on FSC ®-certified paper. FSC is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace. Our paper procurement policy can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/environment Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY For my brave and beautiful mother, Claudette Barnes, and with special thanks to Coleen and Wayne Cook— because of you, this adventure We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls. — anaïs nin Let me have all things, let me have nothing. — wesley covenant prayer This is one way to make a new world. — wallace stegner In the Kingdom of Men January 1, 1970 Rome, Italy 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.

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