In this episode 195, guest hosted by award-winning author Carrie Knowles, we visit with Gina Wilkinson, award-winning journalist, foreign correspondent and documentary filmmaker, whose debut novel is “When the Apricots Bloom.”

Inspired by her own experiences while stationed in Baghdad during Saddam Hussein's rule, former foreign correspondent Gina Wilkinson's evocative debut is told through the eyes of three very different women in Iraq at the turn of the millennium. A secretary, an artist and a diplomat’s wife, each must confront the complexities of trust, friendship, and motherhood under the rule of a dictator and his ruthless secret police.

Susan Wiggs, # 1 New York Times bestselling author, calls the book “A deeply involving and important novel by a master storyteller. Gina Wilkinson highlights the humanity at the center of a brutal conflict. She brings her lived experience to every page of this harrowing, dramatic, and ultimately hopeful book.”

Gina says that through her two decades of living in hotspots across the globe, she’s found that “while we might pray in a certain way, cover our hair or not, bake our bread flat or leavened, at heart we all want the same things—safety, peace, love. We share far more in common than that which divides us.”

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