Clee DeVoss, a High School girl from a small Kansas town has the dream of traveling the world and visiting exotic places. ?After finishing high school, she meets a handsome and suave Iranian student and falls in love. ?Against all dire warnings, they get married and produce two little girls. ?Clee and her daughters are invited by the husband's family to go live with them in Iran while her husband remains in the States to finish his college degree. Clee goes to Iran to live with her in-law's. ?The father-in-law rules the family with an iron fist. ?Clee has always worked and enjoyed working, but now she is not allowed to work and must stay home with the children. After a year, the father-in-law agrees to allow Clee and her sister-in-law return to the states to finish their degrees. Back in the states, Clee discovers that her husband is working only halfheartedly on his degree and has become deeply involved in Iranian student groups and politics. ?They move several times, to different states, different colleges. During this period, Clee and her Iranian husband have a strained relationship. Her skirts and her hair are too short, the children are too obstreperous and he can't study. There is great stress on the marriage. Finally Clee finishes her degree in education and her sister-in-law finishes her doctorate in microbiology. ?They had lived together during the college experience and mostly away from their husbands. ?They have become great friends, like sisters, and they return to Iran. They finally win the approval of the father-in-law to work: the sister-in-law as a lab scientist in microbiology and Clee as an instructor, teaching English as a second language to the Shah's elite jet pilots. Clee's husband is still going to college in the states, and still deeply involved in Iranian politics, while she is living in Iran with her Iranian family and teaching. After, several years, Clee meets an American man who has passionately vowed to never again get involved with l3%