Efronia Katchadourian was born in 1894 to a Christian Armenian family living in the Ottoman Empire. In her late eighties, she finally wrote the long-secret story of her ill-fated youthful love for a Persian Moslem during the era of the Armenian genocide. Her daughter-in-law Stina introduces the memoir and interweaves an affectionate narrative that brings together the historical, biographical, and cultural elements of her indomitable mother-in-law"s tumultuous world.