Both Dawn and Sahar are young, educated women who become entrapped with the oppressive Saudi culture. Dawn is an American, who chose to marry a Saudi man out of love. She and her husband move to Saudi Arabia, and eventually, the husband reverts to traditional Saudi beliefs. He becomes abusive, restrictive, and Dawn suffers miserably. Sahar is a Saudi, attended western schools, and desires many of the freedoms that western women have. Namely, she wants to marry a man she loves. Instead she is forced by her grandfather into an arranged marriage to a man nearly three times her age. The book opens with Sahar’s death, setting the mysterious tone. How does this woman die? Was it really an aneurysm, or was it something more?

Despite not being Saudi herself, Pourasgari intricately details life in Saudi Arabia and the plight of women living in that country. She provides a look at a nation and a brutal, misogynist culture that is largely unnoticed by the western world, where oppression of women is commonplace. Women are second class citizens, worth half the value of a man. They cannot go out without male escorts, are expected to be submissive, and must cover themselves completely in public. Women are chattel, hardly more than livestock to be traded between families for financial or social standing. They are completely in the control of the men in their society.