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Plainville native Paula Jolin readily tells of the day in 1993 when she was stranded on the streets of Damascus with nowhere to go.

She had expected to use her traveler's checks but learned that hotels accepted only cash, and she had none.

So there she was with hefty luggage weighing her down when a kindly Syrian family befriended her, invited her home for breakfast, and offered some tips on how to get her checks cashed and set up a life in their country.

"It turned out to be fine," said Jolin, who stayed in Syria for more than a year, then returned several times.

That day became a turning point in her decade of travels through the Middle East. It also turned out to be a defining moment in her life as a writer. Now 37 and living in North Carolina with her husband and two young children, Jolin is looking toward April 3, when her first novel will hit book stores.

Called "In the Name of God," the book published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings in Connecticut, is geared to young adults.

It tells the story of 17-year-old Nadia, who lives in Syria and strives to be a good Muslim despite the westernization of her society, and who then becomes embroiled in the world of Islamic fundamentalism that espouses the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of faith.

It's an unlikely theme for an author who grew up Catholic in Plainville and graduated from Bishop Feehan High School in Attleboro before attending Brown University to study history and the Chinese language, and spending her summers writing for The Sun Chronicle.

Jolin intended to study in China while a student at Brown, but then the student protests and deaths at Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the spring of 1989 altered her plans, and she chose instead to spend her junior year in Cairo at the American University.

"I fell in love with the region, the people, the culture, the language," Jolin said. "The people were really warm and friendly."

After earning her degree at Brown, she resumed her journeys that took her back to Cairo and to places like Sudan and Yemen - but mostly to Syria, where she traveled several times and spent a total of more than three years.

At the time of her first trip there in 1993, Syria was much more open to westerners than it is today. Yet even then, she said, she probably should not have allowed herself to be picked up by a family she did not know, and "it's probably something I would not do now."

Syria was where she was able to immerse herself in the Arabic language and the local culture. So, it seemed a natural setting for the novel she wanted to write that would focus on someone who was very religious, politically aware and passionate about the world.

But as Jolin began writing, her central character, Nadia, began to change, becoming more political and more involved in Islamic fundamentalism. While she is hardly sympathetic to terrorism, Jolin wanted to show the complexity of the issue, especially in such a nuanced society as Nadia's. She hopes that people who read her book will understand that things are not always as straightforward as they seem.

What she learned during her travels, and what she tried to show in her book, is that Islamic society is often misunderstood by Westerners.

Muslim women, for instance, are happy to be Muslim, she said, and see Islam as giving them rights and liberating their lives, even though most Westerners see it as restrictive and repressive.

Jolin had considered putting her experiences and reflections into a book of non-fiction, but decided she did not have a platform for that kind of writing. And after earning a master's degree in Islamic studies and then doing research for her doctoral dissertation, she realized she was not meant for academic work.

The novel approach seemed like her destiny, especially since she had been crafting stories since first grade.

Although her first book is not yet in stores, Jolin has already sold her second novel to Roaring Press for publication next year.

Unlike "In the Name of God," the next story is set in the United States and involves three girls from different countries - Syria, Japan, and Trinidad, her husband's homeland - who explore the magical traditions of their native countries.

She plans to keep on writing while raising her children, but would like to resume her travels, especially to Syria, where she last visited in 2002.

"I would really like to go back and see how things have changed," she said.

While she has been told that Syrians are much more suspicious of Americans these days, to her it's the country where she found friendship, warmth, and inspiration for her first full work of fiction.

"People think of Syria as a dark and gloomy place. It's not," Jolin said.

"I feel like this book came out of my Middle East experiences."