<P>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 could hardly believe that a handsome college man like Mason 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.</P><P></P><P>In the gated compound of Abqaiq, Gin and Mason are given a home with marble floors, a houseboy, and a gardener. Even among the veiled women and strict laws of shariah, Gin's life has become the stuff of fairy tales. But when a young Bedouin woman is found dead, washed up on the shore, Gin's world closes in around her, and the one person she trusts is nowhere to be found.</P><P></P><P>In the Kingdom of Men abounds with sandstorms and locust swarms, shrimp peddlers, pearl divers, and Bedouin caravans. 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 a woman's quest for the truth.</P>