Publisher's Weekly Review
This brave, beautifully written memoir, originally published as a novel in order to safeguard identities, is the story of a wealthy, young Iranian girl whose family is traumatized by events surrounding Iran's 1979 revolution, and the subsequent fallout that caused the family decades of suffering. Andalibian's family owned an upscale hotel near a revered pilgrimage site; her strictly religious father, Baba, forbade alcohol, unrelated couples, and music in the hotel. As the revolution loomed, a rape and a murder occurred, resulting in false accusations and the devastating arrest of Andalibian's eldest brother, Abdollah. Kangaroo-court justice prevailed amid chaos and violence, leading to Abdollah's imprisonment and the rest of the family's eventual move to California. Tremendous hardship followed in America: Andalibian's mother, Maman, became severely depressed; her loving but authoritarian father had crushing financial losses; and her brothers indulged in reckless teen rebellion, followed by substance abuse, addiction, and numerous failed marriages. Touching on family, faith, assimilation, grief, and closure, Andalibian writes movingly about using her training as a clinical psychologist to heal herself and her family, homing in on secrets carried from Iran as the root of her family's complex trauma. She sharply addresses topics relating to religious and political repression, profiling, and childhood trauma, while skillfully crafting an insightful, passionate immigrant's story with cross-cultural resonance. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Abdollah was just 15 years old when he was thrown into prison, accused of murder. It was the early days of the Islamic Republic in Iran, and the country was still experiencing seismic shocks from the 1979 revolution. In this powerful memoir, Andalibian recounts how her brother Adbollah's imprisonment reverberated throughout the family. The knowledge kept by their parents about what happened to Abdollah festered in the lives of Andalibian and her three remaining brothers for years, after the family left Iran and started a new life in California. Andalibian recounts with tenderness and understanding the conflicts facing her parents, the religious father who ran a hotel for pilgrims and the loving mother who gave them both physical and emotional sustenance. The book's beginnings as a true-life novel are apparent in the emotionally explosive scenes that propel the plot forward. Spanning decades and countries, the story derives its impact by remaining single-mindedly focused on this family, their struggles and secrets tightly woven together to form a single, poignant tapestry. Pair this with Jazmin Darznik's The Good Daughter (2011), also about a young Iranian woman coming to terms with her family's history.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
For Andalibian, there is a before and an after: the pleasant naïveté she experienced as a child under the Shah¿s rule, and the years following the Islamic Revolution, when long-hidden secrets threatened to unravel her family. The author¿s beloved father, Baba, owns and operates a hotel close to a Muslim pilgrimage site in Mashhad, where he raises her and her four siblings. When two young men in town are accused of a grisly crime, Baba shelters them in the hotel, hoping to reform them through prayer and chores until they can be tried fairly under the regime¿s new court of law. But the men end up implicating the author¿s 15-year-old brother in a crime punishable by execution. The family deals with the accusation as best they can but soon grow distrustful of the new ayatollah and flee to London and then Southern California for a fresh start. In their new life as immigrants, the family struggles as alcoholism, drug abuse, and infidelity threaten to tear them apart. VERDICT Andalibian¿s story provides a sweeping account of life in Iran following the revolution and how the aftermath of a political uprising affected one family in a profound way. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
