Through the Lion Gate: An American woman challenges the traditions of a veiled society and discovers a daughter [Paperback]

Eleanor Nicholson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2003

An American woman gives up her job at Paramount Pictures, Inc.Hollywood, California and follows her husband to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, an underdeveloped country of the nineteen fifties. She lives in a fenced in compound, isolated from the veiled and shrouded local women. Her open face and twentieth century manners disturb the simplicity of village life, and the black robed figures run from her. She determines to find a place for herself in this closed society. Thus she challenges the tabus, Oil Company directives, religious zealots, armed soldiers and guards of the Royal Hareem. Under a veil of secrecy, she becomes friends with the family of the Governor of the Eastern Province, first cousins of the King. One day a Princess tells her : "There is a Prince who wants to marry your daughter." Was this the crowning glory of success, or had she dug herself too deeply into a society she could not accept as her own.

Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris, Corp. (April 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401063918
• ISBN-13: 978-1401063917
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,134,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #47 in Books > Travel > Middle East > Saudi Arabia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True Tale From One Who Holds the Bedouins Dear to Her Heart, July 15, 2003

By 

Ellenida "Ellenida" (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Through the Lion Gate (Hardcover)

I have known Eleanor Nicholson since the late 1970's and purchased her first book "In the Footsteps of the Camel" directly from the publisher when I was in London. Her late daughter Linda (whose life was tragically cut short by a drunken driver) and I had worked together for several years and, through Linda, I met Eleanor and her late husband Russell, who died not long ago. Eleanor and Russ taught their daughters the life of the real people of Saudi Arabia by traveling with them through the desert when on holiday from school, sometims staying with the Bedouins in their tents. They did not want their girls to grow up knowing an elitist lifestyle by staying within the confines of the oil company residential compound.

Eleanor is a phenomenal woman with a depth of love and understanding for the people of a country she called home through her daughters' births there, and throughout their school years. She even taught herself how to develop film to avoid sending her film for processing thus subjecting her photography to Government censorship.

I am proud to know the Nicholson family as friends these many years, and still miss Linda very deeply.