For Jill, a young American living in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, life is in "a holding pattern” of long days in a restrictive place - "sandlocked nowhere”, as another expat calls it. Others don't know how to leave, and try to adopt the country as their own. And to those who were born there, the changes seem to come at warp speed. The characters in these linked stories are living an uneasy mesh of two divergent cultures, in a place where tradition and progress are continually in flux.

Anne Sanow was born and raised in California and moved to Saudi Arabia for two years following her high school graduation. Her stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review, and Malahat Review, among other publications. She has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize.