I just have to share this with everyone!

You must read this book!

It's available at Amazon,

and probably at your library. It's such a good book. It's at times so embarrassing that people could be so cruel and judgmental, yet on the other hand it's so uplifting and empowering that other people could be so strong and inherently good.

Gosh it's fabulous. And on top of it, the plot follows three girls as they get a fledgling cafe off the ground, so it's full of scents and imagery and even imaginary pictures of delicious things to eat and remedies to make. The chapters are each preceded by recipes that figure in to the plot. One of them is for elephant ears! I hadn't realized that elephant ears were an Iranian specialty. John and Son's bakery used to sell them when I was a child.

It really is a tremendous book. It's not really very heavy, insofar as the author sort of glosses over the revolution and its causes and the implications of it, but I think that was the plan, sort of like the characters kind of glossed over it as a way to cope; but the events weren't so trivialized that the reader is left in the dark as to what the horror actually meant. The opposite in fact, the reader can get a very real sense of the emotional repercussions if not the historical ones.

This book is so very good, I have to share it with people. It's moving, empowering, chastening, educational, comical, and suspenseful all in one hard to put down quick-tempoed read. get a copy today!