A substantial Iranian-Jewish community grew in Los Angeles in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, leading to a daily battle between old-country culture and American ways, a common occurrence in the city where most everyone comes from somewhere else. In The Luminous Heart of Jonah S., Gina B. Nahai (Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith) explores the complicated forces holding this exile community together, sometimes in spite of itself.
Some immigrants reinvent themselves in a new country, while others remain close to their roots. The Soleymans have done both. By the time the revolution forces Elizabeth Soleyman and her daughter Angela to escape Tehran, the young mother has lost nearly everything imaginable: parents, siblings, her husband, Aaron, daughter Noor and their home. Thanks to connections in the U.S. and her own startling intellect, Elizabeth rises to the top of Los Angeles's Iranian-Jewish community. Soon, though, a man whose unlikely claim to be her late husband's nephew and heir--a claim that has long been denied by the Soleymans--brings his mother's mission to destroy Elizabeth and her family from the old country to the new, never foreseeing that the "curse of the widow's sigh" might take him down as well.
Nahai has crafted an engaging combination of family saga and murder mystery, placed it in the framework of a relatively unknown subculture, and peopled it with fascinating characters. Flavored with both elements of magical realism and down-to-earth observations, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. brings a little-known Los Angeles community to vivid life. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness