There are few who have opened understanding of women in another culture like Suzanne Staples, who won a 1989 Newbery Honor for Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind (Knopf, $13.95; $3.99; ages 11 and up). Staples, for years a foreign corespondent and news desk editor, has begun a new career as young adult novelist with great success. Shabanu , her first novel, was born out of her own surprise at the life she found while working in Pakistan. "I try to remember about how I thought of Pakistan before I went there. It's an artifical country made when the British were cutting India free and you don't expect it to have such a rich culture. So I was amazed at seeing such multifaceted richness."

"Soon after coming to Pakistan I spoke to an archelogist who told me that they can't begin to conserve or even identify all the wealth of the country. People pull Greek statues, Persian glass, or Roman coins out of the desert and it's totally undocumented. Babies wear ancient Greek coins, punched a hole and tied around their necks as good luck charms."

For Staples the most prescious treasures in Pakistan were the stories of people she met, particularly the women. Her wealth of understanding about Pakistani women began while she worked for the Agency for International Development studying how the cycle of poverty in Pakistan could be interrupted with a focus on women.

In the Cholistan desert, she met an eleven year old girl, orphaned, intelligent, independent, and confident. That child became the inspiration for Shabanu, heroine of both Staples' novels. Shabanu grows up on the desert with camel-raising parents who allow her more freedom than many girls. At the end of Shabanu , the young adolescent marries a man forty-five years her senior.

Staples returned from Pakistan with the young adult novel in her hand and unwritten memories filling her head. She was haunted by the many women she hadn't written about and the "vitality in their lives because every single second they're sort of perched on the edge of survival." She'd first seen Shabanu as "a nice little respite from journalism, but I couldn't concentrate. While researching an adult non-fiction, I found myself daydreaming about being back in Pakistan and all this other material that came from my social life with upper class families."

Staples has now published Shabanu 's sequel and companion, Haveli (Knopf, $18.00; 12 and up) which begins a new stage of the heroine's life, living in her husband's home where his other wives hate and defame her. She's trapped and oppressed by Pakistani values and customs, the willful danger of the women who surround her, and even the weather. And yet, Shabanu is able to remain powerful by searching for her choices and manipulating small freedoms. In this novel of a woman's survival against incredible odds, there is a haunting quality that invites women of all ages to think about the value systems of different countries and view a culture where teaching manipulation to one's daughter is a necessity. Due to material that is sometimes sexual and consistently complex, this book is best recommended to a young adult who has the maturity needed to understand the issues presented. The same qualities make it an excellent fast-read for adults.

As Staples shows us the Pakistan of the upperclass in Haveli , we see the social constraints that bind them. "They are worse off than the nomadic peoples who are more free to choose for themselves what would make them happy. In the upper classes the almost-feudal structure imposes continually and the women become very strong in response to the tyranny of tradition."

All the female characters, either for or against Shabanu, are strong. Sharma, Shabanu's aunt dispenses survival wisdoms; Selma, Shabanu's husband's sister provides safe haven; Mumtaz, the daughter Shabanu gives away to protect is fiercly independent; Amina, an elder wife is ruthless in her sabatage and servant control, and Zabo, Shabanu's best friend, devises plans to counteract an arranged marriage with an imbecile.

"Because of all the repression," says Staples, "the women build these incredible inner reserves. They make peace early on with the kinds of lives they're going to have and with tremendous courage, learn to expect the worse and be happy if it doesn't happen."

Staples didn't have to stretch to find instances of women manipulating, or being manipulated, or even details of the richness of their lives. Pakistani women are gracious and graceful and do everything with this wonderful sense of style."

Staples illustrates with a story of going to a wedding where she was flabbergasted at the enormous quantity and size of old jewelry. Her host told her, "Come you must see Auntie's pigeon egg." He led her to a woman who had emeralds the size of pigeon eggs dangling from her ear lobes, with chains attaching them to the top of her head so they wouldn't tear her ears. Like many of the other stories Staples mined in Pakistan, that description went almost directly into her novel.

To Staples, the stories held greater wealth than the enormous jewels she beheld. Haveli is filled with treachery, plotting, murder, and happenings so horrific that they seem almost unreal. But Staples thinks anyone from a upper class household who read Haveli would think it was "really minor stuff. Every story, every character, every detail is based on a real thing that happened to real people. I just strung them together to make a story as if it happened in one family. This isn't my story...it's their stories, all the many stories that touched me."

As Staples strings together the shining story gems , readers get a glimpse of the glimmering treasures that guided her writing. "To me, Pakistan is such a fascinating place. Maybe it's possible that I could get to know another place as well and find it as fascinating, but I just can't imagine it. Living in Pakistan was the high point of my life! I wrote my books to push aside the myths that we have in the West about Islamic culture to expose the richness underneath."