A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas: Real Stories from Bahrain was written during and after the author’s four-month stay in the Middle Eastern island kingdom of Bahrain. With a photographer’s eye, a journalist’s nose for news and a poet’s way with words, Ronald W. Kenyon recounts his observations and displays his insightful understanding of Arab and Islamic culture, customs and religion with particular emphasis on Bahrain. In a wide-ranging series of vignettes and anecdotes, the author takes the reader from the temples and towns of the 5,000-year old Dilmun civilization to the glitz of twenty-first century shopping malls. He offers vivid descriptions of sanguinary religious rites, the tribulations of haggling with a taxi driver whose fare has to be paid in three different currencies and his body clock’s disorientation from dealing with three different weekends. While not a guidebook, A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas is a meticulously-researched primer for anyone visiting or working in Bahrain or the armchair traveler who wants to learn more about current events in the Middle East than what appears in the mainstream media. In the last chapter of the book, entitled “The Truth about Bahrain,” the author strives for objectivity, attempting to set the record straight by placing the current events in Bahrain in their historical, geopolitical and religious context. The author is optimistic about the future of Bahrain and dedicates his book to the people of Bahrain “in the earnest hope that they may, with God’s grace, achieve everlasting harmony.”
