Jasmine is a cancer specialist and single mother in Seattle, long estranged from her Iranian parents and heritage. When faced with the sudden accidental death of Aria, her five-year-old daughter, she finds little solace in the healing advice she's prescribed to her patients and their families. Lacking spiritual scaffolding or comforting rituals to cope, Jasmine buys a one-way ticket around the world. Along the way she writes letters: to her three greatest loves, all now dead, and to her devoted friends who encourage her to return home.

This deeply spiritual novel is the record of Jasmine's journey inward and a moving celebration of the fundamental elements of life: of planting maize in Guatemala, of silent meditation in the mountains of Tibet, and of the rituals of grieving in Iran. It is only when Jasmine, this modern American woman, connects with her ancient heritage that she can finally heal.

"Devastated by the accidental death of her five-year-old daughter, Aria, and still mourning for Aria's father, Justin, who died months before Aria's birth, Iranian-American Yasaman (Jasmine) Talahi embarks on a somber voyage of grief, with mixed results for Assefi's debut. From Arizona's Sonoran desert to the maize fields of Guatemala (where Aria's father had been a Peace Corps worker) to the holy places of Tibet, Jasmine, an oncologist schooled in rationality, searches for the spiritual enlightenment that might bring about her own healing. In the end, her yearlong odyssey brings her to Iran and to her parents, who reject her modern American lifestyle and with whom she has not spoken since before Aria's birth. Assefi, herself an Iranian-American physician, employs an awkward epistolary format, having Jasmine write to Aria, to Justin, to her long-dead grandmother, to friends and an ex-lover (some of whom write back). The letters are often stiffly formal, and the background information reads as forced. But Assefi's themes — loss as physical distance and the spiritual harm that can result from solitary grieving — come through." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Assefi conveys Jasmine's desolation effectively, and the finale in Iran is somewhat affecting. But genuine emotion is undermined again and again by hokum and histrionics — the novel is as heavy-handed as it is heavy-hearted." Kirkus Reviews

"This could be a very good novel about immigration and of the pressure of failed parental expectations, but it is too cluttered and has too many focuses to be about this sort of all-encompassing loss." Library Journal

"[A] slim debut novel that beguiles with its honesty, humanity, empathy and insight." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Nassim Assefi, a second-generation Iranian-American, is an internist specializing in women's health and global medicine. Recently she has been an academic in Seattle, a humanitarian aid worker in Kabul, and an aspiring musician in Havana. When not abroad, she lives in Seattle.