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Book Review

‘The Ruins of Us’ by Keija Parssinen

By S. Kirk Walsh

 |  Globe Correspondent  

  February 11, 2012

In Keiji Parssinen’s debut novel, “The Ruins of Us,’’ Rosalie al-Baylani, a Texan by birth but Saudi by marriage, has created an opulent life with her successful husband, Abdullah, and their teenage children, Mariam and Faisal, for more than two decades in Al Dawoun. This rich life is abruptly blown apart when she discovers that her husband had taken a second wife, a Palestinian, two years earlier in this absorbing examination of the ties of culture and family.

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