Adaia Shumsky's father, Mendel Cohen, was working in the home of the British High Commissioner of Palestine the day that King Abdullah of Jordan admired the commissioner's wooden floor. If only he could have similar workmanship in his palace in Amman, the king said to the high commissioner. Sir Arthur Wauchope replied to Abdullah that he was in luck; the contractor who had laid the floor was in the next room.

The Arab king invited the Jewish carpenter to build a parquet floor for him, and thus began a 10-year friendship that endured until Jordan and Israel went to war in 1948.

Episodes from Cohen's friendship with Abdullah are reconstructed by his daughter and son-in-law in a narrative that draws heavily on Cohen's notes and journals. Because Cohen was an observant chronicler, fascinated by Arab customs and palace politics, this book is more than a personal memoir; it is both an excellent travel log and history of Transjordan to 1948.

The bridge across the Jordan referred to in the title is not a physical one like the Allenby; rather it is the bond of friendship forged between two men on opposite sides of the social and political divides who developed an affection for each other's forthrightness and honesty.

The authors offer the relationship between the king and carpenter--Arab and Jew--as a possible paradigm for greater cooperation not only between Jordan and Israel, now that they have relations, but between the Jewish State and the Arab/Muslim world as well.