Book excerpt: Set in Transjordan just before the 1967 war with Israel, Staircase of a Thousand Steps is a "remarkably well-written...thoroughly absorbing novel" (Arizona Daily Sun) that takes us to a place where memory whispers like fear, where visions of a long-ago forbidden love affair haunt a precocious young girl — and where the flare of old rivalries can be as sudden as searing as the desert wind.