Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell (Doubleday)

I was shocked and appalled at my utter lack of knowledge on the history of the modern Middle East. The area has been a hotbed of controversy and conflict since ancient times. However, the Middle East as we know it today was created after the end of World War I. 

Mary Doria Russell has created a novel in which a young school teacher comes into an inheritance and travels to Egypt and meets and interacts with a number of historical figures including Winston Churchill before he became Prime Minister, T.S. Lawrence, more commonly known as Lawrence of Arabia, and Gertrude Bell. Bob Hope makes a guest appearance as well. 

To be honest, I was familiar with Winston Churchill, only after he became Prime Minister. I had thought Lawrence of Arabia was a Hollywood creation, and I had no idea who Gertrude Bell was. But thanks to Mary Doria Russell’s meticulous research, I now know that before Churchill became Prime Minister, he was the Secretary of State for the Colonies and oversaw British foreign policy in the Middle East. That T.E. Lawrence was an actual person, and it was Gertrude Bell who was a notable person for helping to create the Kingdom of Iraq. 

Dreamers of the Day is narrated in the first person by Agnes Shanklin, an unmarried school teacher living in the Midwest and the eldest of three children. The time was 1918 when the “Great War and the Great Influenza fell on our placid world almost without warning”. Agnes’s family was not immune to the plague and she lost seven of her relatives including her sister and brother-in-law, Lillian and Douglas, their two young sons, her Uncle John, her mother, and her brother Ernest. 

Lillian, Agnes’s sister, had married a professor at a college they both attended and he was offered a post to teach at the American Mission School in Jebail in Syria, in what is today known as Byblos in the country of Lebanon. There, she met and became friends with T.S. Lawrence. It was in 1919 when Agnes’s sister called her and told her that she and her husband were taking her to a talk given by Sir Lawrence. It was after this that she and her family contracted the deadly virus. Agnes was the only one to survive.

After settling the affairs of three separate estates, Agnes found herself “with plenty of money and no family of my own to support” so she booked a passage and took the trip of a lifetime. She made reservations to stay at the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo. The year was 1921 the Semiramis Hotel was chosen as the site for the Cairo Peace Conference, a secret meeting held by British officials to partition the lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire and would become the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.

Into this world comes a single, middle-aged lady from Hawaii who finds herself in the company of celebrities and dignitaries alike. Agnes also finds romance, albeit with a married man who is a German and is Jewish as well. She surmises that he is a spy because she is taken in by his charm and chivalry.

Russell’s story is as entertaining as it is educational. It teaches us the rich history of the Middle East but it also sheds light on the arrogance and condescension against natives by the core of the British bureaucracy. Russell has one of her characters state, “They believe that freedom is an object to be delivered, like a parcel that arrives in the post.” 

The rebuttal by Agnes Shaklin is priceless as she replies, “They must surely know what freedom isn’t. It isn’t having British troops all over their land. It isn’t taxation without representation”. A major point for a lesson in American history. 

Unfortunately, the Middle East is still a land full of conflict. The Palestinians have yet to be given their own nation, the Kurds are still nationless as well. It may be another millennia before anybody sees any real changes in the Middle East. We can only hope. ~Ernie Hoyt