Dreamers of the Day, Mary Doria Russell
Dreamers of the Day, Mary Doria Russell
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Dreamers of the Day

Author: Mary Doria Russell

Narrator: Ann Marie Lee

Abridged: 6 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/11/2008


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

Mary Doria Russell is the author of The Sparrow, Children of God, and A Thread of Grace. Her novels have won nine national and international literary awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the James Tiptree Award, and the American Library Association Readers Choice Award. The Sparrow was selected as one of Entertainment Weekly’s ten best books of the year, and A Thread of Grace was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Russell lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Contact her at www.MaryDoriaRussell.info.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Christi on March 27, 2008

I'm in the middle of this novel about a young woman who has lost her entire family to WWI and the Great Influenza. She travels to Eygpt, where she meets Lawrence (of Arabia) and the gentleman German spy who follows him. So far, it's been a little quote heavy, but I like Agnes, and her struggle to be......more

Goodreads review by Ron on December 04, 2013

Mary Doria Russell began her writing career with two well-received science fiction novels, The Sparrow and Children of God, both about people making contact with extraterrestrials. Lately, though, she's turned to 20th-century history for examples of first encounters fraught with unintended consequen......more

Goodreads review by Jim on November 20, 2008

Set in the 1920s at the end of the first World War, this book follows the surprising adventures of its heroine on her trip to visit Egypt. There she encounters various movers and shakers, such as Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia, in the midst of forming the history and geography of the moder......more