Tahirih is a young, uneducated, but highly curious woman living in late-nineteenth-century Persia where 90 percent of the population is illiterate. She desperately wants to learn to read but is forbidden by her husband to do so. This is her story-as a wife, mother, daughter, friend, but most importantly as herself. She must deal with overwhelming personal choices that reflect the dilemmas that many women faced in the 1800s and today. The novel depicts Persian life in small towns as well as at the palaces of the Shah and his powerful representatives, and how a woman deals with social and religious prejudice in a terribly stilted society.