Book excerpt: Her head is spinning faster than a whirling dervishs. Yet, Christen, the owner of the Galleria Persian Arts in the New Orleans iconic French Quarter, is caught up in doing what is fun versus doing what is right. Her intuition is good; it tells her that this man might be trouble. He looks like Omar Shariff, knows Persian rugs, and acts like he can sell a lot of them. Her sensual nature wants to hire him on the spot. Her Catholic Blessed Mother upbringing cautions her to be careful. The Unraveling of the Rug Merchants recounts the undoing of 44- year-old Polish Catholic Christen Janizeski, by hiring Jamshid Khafezi, an exiled Sufi mystic and Moslem rug merchant as her manager. Booklovers take a metaphorical magic carpet ride around the Islamic World where they are privy to honest bohemian introspective chit chat from paradoxical cultural perspectives. They meet exotic characters when they are taken into native homes and bustling bazaars where they listen in on indigenous conversations and intuit the consequence of forbidden love and sexual intrigue. Readers witness a collision of remarkable characters and worlds as this is at once an extraordinary story of two people who are about to discover who they really are and an unforgettable look into the impact of poor Ohio Valley coal mining country and the stunning culture of Islam.