This book delves into friendship, devotion, love, betrayal, and revenge from the point of view of Soraya, an Iranian Jewish woman who flees to Los Angeles. She is deeply in love with her husband, Aziz, and secretly witnessed him in bed with her best friend, Parvaneh, who is married to Aziz’s best friend, Hamid. Soraya runs off without confronting them, imagining that there is a continuing sexual relationship between the two adulterers. They live in religiously restrictive mullah-run Iran, which has recently changed dramatically from the years of religious freedom during the time of the Shah. Iranian women are expected to go along with their husbands’ infidelities, but Soraya will not. She has a close relationship with her father, Baba, and a more conflictive one with Madar, her mother, who suspected Baba of an extramarital affair. Her grandmother, Mamabozorg, has given Soraya financial and emotional support. Much of the story revolves around Soraya’s dramatic reflections about the past and present, superstitions, and plotting her revenge. Meanwhile, Soraya holds her own devastating secret from her beloved Aziz. Compelling and a bit Gothic in atmosphere, this novel is dotted with Iranian phrases and details about life there, leaving the reader with much to ponder.
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Miriam Bradman Abrahams, mom, grandmom, avid reader, sometime writer, born in Havana, raised in Brooklyn, residing in Long Beach on Long Island. Longtime former One Region One Book chair and JBC liaison for Nassau Hadassah, currently presenting Incident at San Miguel with author AJ Sidransky who wrote the historical fiction based on her Cuban Jewish refugee family’s experiences during the revolution. Fluent in Spanish and Hebrew, certified hatha yoga instructor.
