2016, Alesa Lightbourne
324 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 5/25/18
Goodread/s rating: 4.4 - 126 ratings
My rating: 3
Contemporary Kurdistan
First line/s: "Two women laugh exuberantly in a snapshot, their arms around each other, heads close together and aimed toward the camera."
My comments: This feels like a self-published book, and reads like nonfiction. There weren't enough details for me. It was a total "telling," with no "showing." I couldn't imagine the school, her apartment, the village, the kids. No showing, only telling. But was was told was really interesting, though I think it gave me an incomplete picture. I wanted more, lots more. Based on a true story and very readable, just lacking the details that I need to form a picture in my head.
Goodreads synopsis: “Courageous teachers wanted to rebuild war-torn nation.”
With her marriage over and life gone flat, Theresa Turner responds to an online ad, and lands at a school in Kurdish Iraq. Befriended by a widow in a nearby village, Theresa is embroiled in the joys and agonies of traditional Kurds, especially the women who survived Saddam’s genocide only to be crippled by age-old restrictions, brutality and honor killings. Theresa’s greatest challenge will be balancing respect for cultural values while trying to introduce more enlightened attitudes toward women — at the same time seeking new spiritual dimensions within herself.
The Kurdish Bike is gripping, tender, wry and compassionate — an eye-opener into little-known customs in one of the world’s most explosive regions — a novel of love, betrayal and redemption.
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