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BookList: Like her debut, Mirage (1995), Khashoggi’s second novel sculpts a broader understanding of Arab women’s lives, both in the Middle East and America. Dina Ahmed has it all, a happy family and flourishing floral-design business, but her world ruptures when she discovers that her husband, Karim, has kidnapped their eight-year-old twins from New York and returned with them to his homeland in Jordan. Dina enlists her good friends Sarah, a Jewish physician, and Emmeline, a “Creole Martha Stewart,�� to help her pick up the pieces and find a way to fight back. All the while, Dina must shield her eldest son, who has been rejected by his father for being gay, while risking all to regain her twins. Delicate subjects--from the complexity of marriage to the clash of American and Islamic cultures--are approached with care and balance, and the combination of savvy writing and three-dimensional characters brings refreshing depth and perspective to this highly charged, emotional story. -- MishaStone (BookList, 09-15-2004, p208)