Bahrain: The Meeting Point

 

The Meeting Point

by Lucy Caldwell

 

 

 So, I actually read this book way back in May, just as things were getting crazy with the end of school year stuff.  I waited too long to write about it, then got distracted by several other books I read during the summer so I kept stalling.  I don't know if anything I write now, six entire months later, will accurately depict my experience of reading The Meeting Point.  But I'll give it a shot.  The six month break was good for my motivation to get back to my alphabetical, literary journey around the world.  I'd been feeling discouraged by a few duds and the lack of choices for many of the smaller countries, but I've recommitted and will continue to work my way through the B's.  I really am glad I didn't impose a timeframe on myself for this endeavor though.  I think I'm more the meandering type.

 

The Meeting Point is about a young woman, Ruth and her husband, Euan, who move to Bahrain with their young daughter so that Euan can serve as a Christian missionary.  Ruth believes their purpose is to provide pastoral care to a church that is attended by expatriates from Western Europe, primarily the United States and their own homeland, the United Kingdom.  But upon their arrival in Bahrain, she learns there is another, very dangerous mission that Euan intends to undertake, one that risks their physical safety and compromises what they have built together as a young family.  When her protests fall on deaf ears and Euan begins spending increasingly long stretches of time away from home, Ruth befriends a British, adolescent girl, Noor, who is living with her Arab father and recovering from a tragic incident at the boarding school she previously attended.  Through their friendship and through helping care for Ruth's child, Noor begins to heal from the past and from her loneliness.  She relies on Ruth to mentor her through the process of learning to trust again, but meanwhile, Ruth is distracted by Farid, a much younger man who acts as her tour guide and shows her the beauty of her temporary home in Bahrain.  As the relationships between Ruth and each of the other characters ... Euan, Noor, and Farid ... spin out of control, Ruth learns some painful lessons.  With Bahrain as a haunting backdrop, Ruth questions her faith in God, in her marriage, and in herself. 

 

The book's foundation in Christianity is important to the character development, the setting, and the context of the underlying themes and plot.  You do not need to be Christian to read and enjoy the novel, nor are you likely to find it to be preachy or theological.  In this sense, Caldwell did an outstanding job of exploring religion, history, and politics while focusing purely on how the collision of those three things impacts the humans at the vertex of those ideologies.  Goodreads rating shows just over three stars overall, but I gave it four.