Once again I have discovered in a book I am reading, a passage that fits our American situation today. The book is Dreamers of the Day: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell. Her protagonist through whom the story is told is an American school teacher who, in 1921, inherits a little money and decides to travel to Egypt for a well-earned vacation. She arrives in Cairo just as Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Gertrude Bell arrive there for the Cairo Conference of 1921 which divided (or united?) the Middle East into the countries we know today.
The book is well researched and although fiction, Russell allows the real people to speak for themselves as she has them saying things that they wrote in later books or diaries.
The story also sheds light on the condition of women following WWI, the beginnings of liberation and their struggle following the Great Depression. During her long and interesting telling of her life, Agnes Shanklin, our heroine, learns three things that she advises her readers which are very appropriate for today:
“Read to children.
Vote.
And never by anything from a man who’s selling fear.” (Pg. 249)
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