On a blustery day in London, the dark secrets and troubled past of Maryam Mazar surface violently, with tragic consequences for her daughter, Sara, and her newly orphaned nephew Saeed. Consumed with guilt, Maryam leaves the safe comfort of her suburban home and mild English husband to return to Mazareh, the remote village on Iran's northeast border where her own story began. There she must face her past and the memories of a life she was forced to leave behind, in the days when she was young, headstrong, and beautiful.Back in England, Sara, who has never felt a strong tie to Maryam's birthplace, tries to understand what could have compelled her mother to leave. Together with Saeed and her distraught father, she begins to unearth Maryam's story from amid her memories of opium poppies, family lore and fragments of conversation, photographs and a few lines of poetry. In her quest to piece their life back together, Sara follows her mother to Iran to discover the roots of her unhappiness and to try to bring her home. Far from the streets of London, in a land of minarets, among the snow-capped mountains and dusty plains that have haunted her mother's dreams for half a century, Sara finally learns the terrible price Maryam once had to pay for her freedom, and of the love she left behind.

Book details

• Format Hardcover
• Pages254 pages
• LanguageEnglish
• ISBN100670038113
• ISBN139780670038114