Iris Mitlin Lav grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. She moved to Washington, DC, with her husband in 1969, where they raised three children. She is retired from a long, award-winning career of policy analysis and management with an emphasis on improving policies for low- and moderate-income families. She has traveled extensively in the US and abroad, and she lived in Thailand for two years in the 1970s. She and her husband now live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with Mango, their goldendoodle, and with grandchildren nearby.

When Crystal’s husband, Brian, suddenly announces that his company is sending him to manage its Bangkok office and that he expects her and their children to come along, she reluctantly acquiesces. She doesn’t want to leave the job she loves and everything familiar in their small Oklahoma town; it’s 1975, however, and Crystal, a woman with traditional values, feels she has to be a good wife and follow her husband.

Crystal finds beauty in Thailand, but also isolation and betrayal. Fighting intense loneliness and buffeted by a series frightening and shocking events, she struggles to adapt to a very different culture and battle a severe depression—and, ultimately, decide whether her broken relationship with her husband is worth saving.