Daniel Boone Regional Library's 2013 One Read selection combines universal themes such as relationships and family with a glimpse into a foreign culture in a way that library officials say makes the novel a perfect choice for the annual community reading program.
Area patrons voted for "The Ruins of Us" by Keija Parssinen, in which the main character Rosalie, an American expatriate whose 20-year marriage to wealthy Saudi Abdullah al-Baylani is threatened when she learns he has taken a second wife. Rosalie now has to decide whether to leave her husband and Saudi Arabia while considering the country's restrictions on women and the needs of her teenage children.
"I think this will be a really good choice because there are so many different topics - there's an American who has chosen to live in a different culture and the landscape is a different culture, and that just makes it fascinating," said Mitzi St. John, DBRL public relations manager. "It's also a story about family and that theme is universal to anybody, anywhere in the world."