DREAMERS OF THE DAY

"You won't really understand your times until you understand mine," says Agnes, a 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, who speaks from the afterlife as she looks back at her first trip to Egypt in 1921. Narrator Ann Marie Lee's cheerful, friendly tones help listeners suspend disbelief when the déclassée Agnes is welcomed into the rarified world of T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, and other dignitaries. Relying heavily on coincidence, the story depicts Agnes as privy to the intricate events of the Cairo Peace Conference, which created the nations of Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, and ostensibly, our current problems in the Middle East. Lee is ingenuous and chirpy as Agnes spends her days with Lawrence and the Churchills and her nights with Karl, a German spy. Lee makes the listening easy, but the book is a stretch. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2008]