Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith($13.56Value)

Description

An epic tale blending Persian and Jewish cultures travels from the Tehran's Jewish ghetto, through Turkish whorehouses, to Los Angeles as Lili, with the help of Aunt Miriam the Moon, searches for her magical mother Roxanna the Angel. By the author of Cry of the Peacock. 35,000 first printing. Tour. The first voice we hear in Gina B. Nahai's second novel is that of Lili, the grown daughter of a miraculous mother. When Lili was 5 and living in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran, her mother, Roxanna, "had grown wings, one night when the darkness was the color of her dreams, and flown into the star-studded night of Iran that claimed her." Thirteen years would pass, Lili informs us, before she would find her mother again. This short introduction serves as a framing device for the story of Roxanna's life, a life begun as a "bad-luck" child. According to her sister, Miriam the Moon, she "had been a runaway before she ever became a wife or a mother, before she came into existence or was even conceived." There is an unwritten rule that any book featuring such character names as Roxanna the Angel, Miriam the Moon, and Alexandra the Cat must also contain a great deal of magical realism; Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith lives up to expectations. In addition to Roxanna's winged departure from her home and family, there are episodes involving illuminated sunflowers, dreams of flight that result in beds of white feathers, and Roxanna's final illness, a "mysterious fluid that ... started to fill her body like a poisonous presence, that oozed out of the corner of her eyes, swelled her arms and legs till she had no more use of them and turned her once-magical voice into a gurgling whisper." Besides the miraculous, this novel has undeniable sweep, beginning in Tehran, touching down in Turkey, and ending up in Los Angeles many years later with hair-raising adventures punctuating each change of address. Gina B. Nahai has crafted a lyrical novel reminiscent of the work of Isabelle Allende. Readers with a taste for the fantastic will enjoy this tale. --Alix Wilber A heady, sprawling tale of women, family, and country by the Iranian-born author of Cry of the Peacock (1991. o.p.), this novel is both mesmerizing and difficult in its portrayal of what to most Western readers will seem a hard, exotic society. Weaving together an impressive cast of characters and stories, it centers on Roxanna the Angel, the bad-luck daughter of a troubled family in Tehran's Jewish ghetto, and on her daughter, Lili, whom Roxanna abandons to an unsympathetic paternal household. The reader learns of Roxanna's history and of the mysterious power of flight that accompanies her need to escape the sorrow of this history, of Lili's nearly lethal anxiety for her mother, which maintains her through a lonely childhood and adolescence, and of the powerful attraction of freedom in spite of the hardships freedom can bring. Against the backdrop of the fall of the Shah and the flight of Iranian Jews to America, this unique mother-daughter story unfolds powerfully and unforgettably. Highly recommended.?Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington P.L., OH Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Nahai (Cry of the Peacock, 1991) revisits Iran's Jewish community as she tells the moving if not always engrossing tale of one woman's struggle in a time of political turmoil. The saga of Roxanna begins in 1938 with her birth in Tehran's ghetto, and ends in 1980s Los Angeles. It is as much the story of a family increasingly affected by outside events as it is a low-key exploration of the conflict between destiny and choice. Nahai cuts early to the past, as the now-adult Lili recalls how, as a five-year-old, she saw her mother, Roxanna, grow wings and fly away. (Other clumsy flirtations with magical realism include sunflowers that give off light, sorrow that turns into body fat, and white feathers found after dreams of flight.) Warned that she is the bad-luck one, the eight-year-old Roxanna is given away to Alexandra, an eccentric Russian refugee. After Alexandra's death, Roxanna flees the ghetto, but finds herself trapped by love in a house on the ``Avenue of Faith.'' The house belongs to wealthy Teymur and his scheming wife, Frulein Claude; Roxanna marries their son Sohrab in order to be close to Teymur, whom she really loves. When their affair is discovered, shes kept a prisoner in the house, and in desperation runs away, leaving Lili behind. Working first as a prostitute and then as kitchen help in Turkey, Sohrab sends Lili to school in Los Angeles. Then, as the Islamic revolution begins, Roxanna's sisters flee to L.A.where Lili, still mourning her mother, is unwillingly united with them, and eventually even with Roxanna, now bloated with sorrow and regret. Lots of action, local color, and adventure, but not enough to give Roxanna's story the impact it demands. (First printing of 35,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "The author has