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Book Summary and Reviews of Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

Dreamers of the Day

by Mary Doria Russell

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  • Mar 2008, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes 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 Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions – and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie – enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.

Neither a pawn nor a participant at the conference, Agnes is ostensibly insignificant, and that makes her a welcome sounding board for Churchill, Lawrence, and Bell. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and toward a personal awakening.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"While...the novel can sometimes be hard-going, she manages to make the characters, both real and imaginary, consistently captivating." - Library Journal.

"An inspired fictional study of political folly." - Kirkus Review.

"Though the bizarre, whimsical ending doesn't quite gel, Russell has created an instantly likable heroine whose unlikely adventures will keep readers hooked to the end." - Publishers Weekly.

This information about Dreamers of the Day was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Carole

Charming and Informative Book Set in Post WWI
I was delighted with many aspects of this book. It was beautifully written, especially in describing the main character. And it was wonderful to have actual events and characters mixed in with fictional ones. I didn't want the book to end!

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Author Information

Mary Doria Russell Author Biography

© Dina Rossi

Mary Doria Russell was born in suburban Chicago in 1950. Her mother was a Navy nurse and her father was a Marine Corps drill sergeant. She and her younger brother, Richard, consequently developed a dismaying vocabulary at an early age. She learned discretion at Sacred Heart Catholic elementary school; how to diagram sentences at Glenbard East High; cultural anthropology at the University of Illinois; social anthropology at Northeastern University in Boston; and biological anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Mary and Don Russell have been happily married for an unusually high percentage of the years since 1970. Don is a software engineer and one of the founders of AllTech Medical Systems, which designs and manufactures medical imaging equipment for the Chinese domestic market. They ...

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Mary Doria Russell's Website

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