In the Kingdom of Men

Here is the first thing you need to know: I'm a bare foot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma, and all the marble floors in the world will never change that about me.

Here is the second thing: that girl they pulled from the sea, her hair tangled with mangrove - my husband didn't kill her, not the way they say he did.'

Raised by her grandfather, a strict Pentecostal minister, in a two-room shack, Gin McPhee never imagined she'd have a husband she loved and a houseboy making her breakfast.

When Mason takes a job at the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia, Gin finds herself a company wife, in a company house, in the company compound. Her new life is one of private clubs, dressing for dinner and the illusion of freedom - she learns to drink discreetly, flirt safely and, when Mason returns home from weeks on the rig, to pretend that their marriage isn't changing.

But as Gin tires of cocktails and cigarettes she realizes that the glamour and the wealth inside the gates are bought with the corruption beyond them. And when a young Bedouin woman is discovered dead in the bay, she begins to ask dangerous questions. As Gin's world closes in around her, the one person she trusts is nowhere to be found.