Meanwhile, a Saudi divorce ultimately means a mother’s loss of her children.Īnd then there’s the teenage son Faisal, who has his own set of problems, less captivating than Rosalie’s, but still compelling. Rosalie has so entangled herself into Saudi life that returning to the US presents its own challenges: she has no professional skills and she has even forgotten how to drive. She has transformed herself to fit into life in Saudi Arabia-“The Kingdom,” as it’s called. The solution to Rosalie’s problem is not simple. At one point Rosalie says, “I’m disintegrating in that house.” The home may look impressive, but inside is a family collapsing. If he wanted a Saudi wife, he would have married one.Īt the center of the story is the Al-Baylani villa, grand and garish, located in a neighborhood called The Diamond Mile, where Rosalie and Abdullah host vast family meals on Friday. Abdullah explains to a friend why he’s grown apart from his wife Rosalie: she has become “too Saudi” for him. Later, we meet Rosalie’s husband Abdullah, a man who keeps secrets, the biggest of all: his second wife of two years lives in a villa down the street. In these first pages, Rosalie discovers that her Saudi husband of 28 years has taken a second wife. In the opening scene of Keija Parssinen’s novel, The Ruins of Us, we meet Rosalie, a red-headed Texan who has been living in Saudi Arabia for more than two decades.
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