The memoir spans several time periods. The Jazayeri family first emigrated to the US in 1972, and Dumas recalls that most Americans at that time received them warmly. The family’s first experience was very different from their time in the US after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, an uprising in which the Shah was deposed and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The Shah was favored by the American government and was generally a Western-friendly leader; the Ayatollah regime was not. One of the critical developments of the Iranian Revolution was the capture of more than 60 Americans who were taken from the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, as hostages. The militants’ storming of the embassy took place just after the Shah arrived in New York for cancer treatment, and many claimed that the hostages would be held until the Shah was returned to Iran, where he would face execution at the hands of the new regime.

The crisis lasted 444 days and had particularly far-reaching impacts in the US. It significantly influenced the outcome of the 1980 US presidential election between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and the hostages were released minutes after Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981.