The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 Singing in Babylon Ann Gaylia O’Barr, OakTara Publishers, 2010, $19.95, paperback, 296 pages. Singing in Babylon is a love story featuring a strong-willed young teacher and an equally stubborn journalist, both struggling with past tragedies, who are thrown together in a foreign land. KateMcCormack, a recent graduate sad- dled with college debt and limited options, decides accept an offer to teach English in Saudi Arabia. Journalist Philip Tangvald is on the trail of a story about illegal immigration routes through theMiddle East andNorth Africa. A unique and compelling romance, their romance is also a fascinating journey through a foreign culture. This book is the first in a series of novels in which Ann O’Barr focuses on the years from World War II through 9/11, narrating the journeys of Americans struggling with personal challenges against a background of global upheaval and cultural conflict. Quiet Deception and Searching for Home are due to be released by OakTara Publishers later in the year. Ann Gaylia O’Barr is a retired FSO whose assignments during a 14-year career starting in 1990 took her to Saudi Arabia (twice), Algeria, Canada and Tunisia. InWashington, she served in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Mi- gration and in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She has published several articles and a previous novel, First Light (B&H Publishing Group, 1984). Originally from Nashville, Tenn., Ann O’Barr lives in Langley, Wash. Tribe James Bruno, Bittersweet House Press, 2011, $13.99, paperback, 366 pages; $2.99, Kindle Edition. A secret peace with the Taliban and completeU.S. troopwithdrawal is to be secured with a huge Central Asian oil deal. Backers will garner enormous wealth, and the re-election of a president is virtually guaranteed. CIA officer Harry Brennan’s moral conscience compels him to get in the way of this plot. In doing so, he faces political enemies at homemore dan- gerous than the terrorists who have kidnapped his daughter, whose fate is in turn tied to that of Russian spy Sergei Nem- sky’s daughter. The action takes the reader fromAfghanistan toGeorgetown and to Yemen, as the adversaries forma risky pact to save their daughters, andBrennan confronts layers of intrigue within the U.S. government. “Bruno adds his own mordant wit and deeply profes- sional cynicism to the mix to create a potboiler that has everything — action, suspense, sex, humor and an Amer- ican take on John Le Carré’s gray world of espionage,” writes one reviewer. “It is a meditation on the bigger issues of trust and betrayal and how to find room for patriotism or integrity in a world of runaway egos and ambition.” In a 23-year career as a State Department FSO, James Bruno served in Cuba, Guantanamo (as liaison with the Cuban military), Pakistan/Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambo- dia andWashington, D.C. Earlier, he worked as a military intelligence officer and as a journalist. He is a member of the Diplomatic Readiness Reserve and the author of two previous novels, Permanent Interests (lulu.com, 2011) and CHASM (lulu.com , 2007). Stateside Jehanne Dubrow, TriQuarterly Books, 2010, $16.95, paperback, 72 pages. In thismoving, graceful collection of poems, JehanneDubrow explores her experience as a military wife through three stages of her hus- band’s tours: preparation, deploy- ment and return. The poems touch on many aspects of a marriage strained by separation: the mundane domesticity before departure; the aching loneliness during the deploy- ment, wherein she invokes Penelope’s long wait for Odyss- eus; and, finally, the awkward tensions of his eventual return. Dubrow displays a mastery of lyrical forms. The ele- gance of the structure is such that when form is dropped or shifted the subtle changes effortlessly complement the gen- tle sensuality of the material. Equally impressive for the re- finement of its style and the poignancy of its subject, Stateside will be relished by anyone with a love of poetry or a familiarity with the travails of professional separation. (See the April FSJ for a full review.) Jehanne Dubrow is the wife of a naval officer and the daughter of career diplomats. She holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches creative writing at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. C OVER S TORY Continued on page 43