Book Review: While the Sands Whisper

This is a copy of a review I put on Amazon. If you'd like to get a review copy of a book of your choice, go to the Story Cartel website.

While the Sands Whisper 

by Linda Ruth Horowitz

In this book we have a narrator who is coming to terms with a choice she made many years ago to save her sanity, but which meant sacrificing her family life and love and left her alone and lonely. To compensate for this she roams the world as a photographer, documenting the lives of others in different countries. With her family living in Israel, she spends time in Sinai and is entranced by the desert area, finding love again among the Bedouin race, but against the background of suspicion of her activities by the authorities, and some unsavoury activities pursued by her Bedouin friends, which put her in great danger.

The author says the book is fiction plus autobiography. She is herself a well-travelled and successful photographer. Her knowledge of her craft comes across well in the book as does her undoubted passion for the area and people she is writing about.  The pace of the story varies and includes flashbacks. Some of these go right back to the narrator’s childhood association with American gangsters, which seems to make some of the Bedouin acceptable to her despite their criminal activity.

If you like adventure travel stories in which you learn how other people live, this book is for you. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found it hard to put down because the story’s twists were hard to predict. My only complaint is that I didn’t find the ending very satisfying, although I can’t imagine where else it could go. I’m wondering whether Ms Horowitz now has a sequel up her sleeve.