But the reality of life in Jidda soon became suffocating, and she and her daughter soon left. "The lack of physical freedom was really frustrating," she said. Women there, she said, "either spit in the face of it, or find a way around it. It forces aggression or cleverness."
For Ferraris, it forced a return to San Francisco, after finally growing tired of her mother-in-law's inopportunely timed "heart episodes" that delayed each impending departure. Her husband eventually joined her in the U.S. for about a year before the couple got divorced and he returned to his childhood home. He has had three wives by arranged marriage since -- with some overlap. Ferraris, who remains close to him, notes his long-distance calls to complain about his new companions.
"Three wives," she said laughingly. "I can't imagine. After all the fuss that happened with me, just one wife."
After coming back to the U.S., Ferraris worked odd jobs that led to stints living in Italy, New York (for an MFA at Columbia), Los Angeles, and finally back to San Francisco, where she and her daughter, now 17, live.
Ferraris initially hesitated to write from the perspective of a Saudi man, worried about questions of authenticity. Her first crack at writing a novel was a straightforward mystery, set in Saudi Arabia, told from the perspective of an American woman. It had "car chases and interrogation scenes -- everything but a nuclear bomb."
But when an agent asked her to edit out the lone supporting Muslim character, Ferraris realized he fascinated her most. The next draft had him at its center.
Now, she's resurrecting her first mystery tale, and has a memoir in mind of her time in Saudi Arabia. Her sojourn in Italy has inspired her to write a historical novel about Arab influence in Salerno. And she has already wrapped up a young adult fantasy novel, which she described as "Patrick O'Brian's navy stories meets 'Star Wars.' "
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swati.pandey@latimes.com
