One star-studded night, five-year-old Lili witnesses her mother, Roxanna, sprout wings and vanish into the sky, undisturbed by the rules of gravity. Roxanna leaves no farewell, no word of explanation, no trace of her existence. Lili's subsequent search for her mother - spurred by the tireless efforts of her aunt Miriam the Moon - is at the heart of this mesmerising epic tale that follows Roxanna, born as a bad-luck child in the harsh Jewish ghetto of Tehran, through the opulent world of Iran's aristocracy to the whorehouses of Turkey and beyond, to present day Los Angeles. At stake are Roxanna's hopes for happiness, for escaping the bonds of Old World tradition and finding forgiveness for that most terrible of sins - desire. Weaving together strands of Persian and Jewish culture with heartbreaking, lyrical prose, Gina Nahai brings to life a courageous circle of women rooted in their homeland but trying to reshape their lives as exiles in a new world.