20 Historical Fiction Books Readers Say They’ll Never Forget

There are some historical fiction books you enjoy, and then there are the ones you’re still thinking about years later. This list is all about those unforgettable reads. Books with strong female characters, incredible settings, and characters you don’t want to leave behind.
If you’re looking for top-rated historical fiction books or simply want a few truly memorable historical novels for your reading list, these are the ones readers keep recommending.

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

In Before We Were Yours, twelve-year-old Rill and her younger siblings are taken from their family in 1939 and placed in a cruel children’s home in Tennessee. Years later, Avery begins looking into her family’s past and finds a connection to what happened to those children. The story moves between the two timelines and is based on a real adoption scandal in America. Also read 9 Books Just As Good As Everyone Says



Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

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Mustard Seed by Laila Ibrahim

Mustard Seed takes place a few years after the Civil War and follows Lisbeth, Jordan, and Mattie as they return to a Virginia plantation connected to their past. Lisbeth must face the family she left behind. Jordan and Mattie are trying to help people who are still being treated terribly despite slavery being over. Also read 25 Books Readers Would Give 6 Stars Without Hesitation


The bestselling author of Yellow Crocus returns with a haunting and tender story of three women returning to the plantation they once called home.
Oberlin, Ohio, 1868. Lisbeth Johnson was born into privilege in the antebellum South. Jordan Freedman was born a slave to Mattie, Lisbeth’s beloved nurse. The women have an unlikely bond deeper than friendship. Three years after the Civil War, Lisbeth and Mattie are tending their homes and families while Jordan, an aspiring suffragette, teaches at an integrated school.
When Lisbeth discovers that her father is dying, she’s summoned back to the Virginia plantation where she grew up. There she must face the Confederate family she betrayed by marrying an abolitionist. Jordan and Mattie return to Fair Oaks, too, to save the family they left behind, who still toil in oppression. For Lisbeth, it’s a time for reconciliation. For Jordan and Mattie, it’s time for liberation.
As the Johnsons and Freedmans confront the injustice that binds them, as well as the bitterness and violence that seethes at its heart, the women must find the courage to free their families—and themselves—from the past.

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The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel

In The Paris Daughter, Elise and Juliette become close friends in Paris just before World War II. When Elise is in danger, she leaves her young daughter with Juliette, believing she’ll be safer there. But a bombing changes everything. After the war, Elise returns looking for her child and eventually follows the trail all the way to New York. Also read 8 Books Just as Good as Everyone Says They Are



From the bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names comes a gripping historical novel about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation.

Paris, 1939: Young mothers Elise and Juliette become fast friends the day they meet in the beautiful Bois de Boulogne. Though there is a shadow of war creeping across Europe, neither woman suspects that their lives are about to irrevocably change.

When Elise becomes a target of the German occupation, she entrusts Juliette with the most precious thing in her life—her young daughter, playmate to Juliette’s own little girl. But nowhere is safe in war, not even a quiet little bookshop like Juliette’s Librairie des Rêves, and, when a bomb falls on their neighborhood, Juliette’s world is destroyed along with it.

More than a year later, with the war finally ending, Elise returns to reunite with her daughter, only to find her friend’s bookstore reduced to rubble—and Juliette nowhere to be found. What happened to her daughter in those last, terrible moments? Juliette has seemingly vanished without a trace, taking all the answers with her. Elise’s desperate search leads her to New York—and to Juliette—one final, fateful time.

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The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

The Storyteller follows Sage, a baker who becomes friends with an elderly man named Josef. Their friendship changes when Josef tells her something shocking about his role during the Holocaust and asks her to do something she never expected. Also read 18 Holocaust Historical Fiction Books Readers Say Are 10/10


Some stories live forever . . .

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future.

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The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel

In The Winemaker’s Wife, Inès and Céline live at a champagne house in France during the Nazi occupation. The people around them become involved with the French Resistance, and one bad decision can put everyone in danger. A second timeline follows Liv in 2019 as her grandmother brings her to France and finally explains how their family is connected to the winery. Also read 8 Historical Fiction Books I’m Begging Your Book Club to Read Before 2026 Ends




Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, half-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater—rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate.

When Céline recklessly follows her heart in one desperate bid for happiness, and Inès makes a dangerous mistake with a Nazi collaborator, they risk the lives of those they love—and the champagne house that ties them together.

New York, 2019: Liv Kent has just lost everything when her eccentric French grandmother shows up unannounced, insisting on a trip to France. But the older woman has an ulterior motive—and a tragic, decades-old story to share. When past and present finally collide, Liv finds herself on a road to salvation that leads right to the caves of the Maison Chauveau.

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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Shadow of the Wind begins in postwar Barcelona when young Daniel finds a forgotten novel by an author named Julián Carax. He loves it so much that he tries to find the author’s other books, only to learn that someone has been destroying every copy.


Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets—an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

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Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan

In Beneath a Scarlet Sky, Italian teenager Pino Lella helps Jewish people escape across the Alps during World War II. Later, he becomes the driver for a powerful German commander and uses his position to spy for the Allies.


Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.
In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.
Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.
Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

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Meet Me in Monaco by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb

Meet Me in Monaco takes readers to the French Riviera during Grace Kelly’s famous romance with Prince Rainier. Perfumer Sophie Duval helps Grace escape a photographer and unexpectedly becomes part of her world. Sophie also meets British photographer James Henderson, beginning a relationship that continues around the events leading up to Grace Kelly’s royal wedding.


Set in the 1950s against the backdrop of Grace Kelly’s whirlwind romance and glamourous wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco, New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb take the reader on an evocative sun-drenched journey along the Côte d’Azur in this page-turning novel of passion, fate, and second-chances.

Movie stars and paparazzi flock to Cannes for the glamorous film festival, but Grace Kelly, the biggest star of all, wants only to escape from the flash-bulbs. When struggling perfumer Sophie Duval shelters Miss Kelly in her boutique, fending off a persistent British press photographer, James Henderson, a bond is forged between the two women and sets in motion a chain of events that stretches across thirty years of friendship, love, and tragedy.

James Henderson cannot forget his brief encounter with Sophie Duval. Despite his guilt at being away from his daughter, he takes an assignment to cover the wedding of the century, sailing with Grace Kelly’s wedding party on the SS Constitution from New York. In Monaco, as wedding fever soars and passions and tempers escalate, James and Sophie—like Princess Grace—must ultimately decide what they are prepared to give up for love.

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The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman

In The Lies They Told, Lena arrives in America from Germany with her young daughter in the 1930s, hoping to build a better life. She ends up in rural Virginia, where poor families are being targeted by the state’s eugenics program. When Lena herself is labeled unfit and sent to an institution, she has to fight to get back to her daughter.


In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.

When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.

Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”

After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena face impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.

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Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Lonesome Dove follows two former Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, who decide to drive a huge herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. What sounds like a simple adventure becomes a long, dangerous journey filled with friendship, loss, violence, love, and plenty of unforgettable characters. It’s a Western, but the characters are really what make the book. Also read 13 Unforgettable Historical Fictions That Will Leave You Thinking for Days


A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

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American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

In American Dirt, Lydia lives in Acapulco with her husband and young son, Luca. After her journalist husband writes about a dangerous cartel leader, their family becomes a target. Lydia and Luca are forced to leave everything behind and travel north toward the United States, joining other migrants making the same dangerous journey. Also read 13 Most Memorable Historical Fiction Books, According to Serious Readers


Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

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The Midwife of Auschwitz by Anna Stuart

The Midwife of Auschwitz follows Ana, a midwife imprisoned at Auschwitz, and Ester, a younger woman who becomes her assistant. They work in the maternity area and try to protect mothers and babies whenever they can. When healthy babies are taken away to be raised by German families, the women come up with a risky way to give those families a chance of finding each other again after the war. Also read 13 Unforgettable Historical Fictions That Will Leave You Thinking for Days


Auschwitz, 1943: As I held the tiny baby in my arms, my fingers traced the black tattoo etched across her little thigh. And I prayed that one day this set of numbers, identical to her mother’s, would have the power to reunite a family torn apart by war…

Inspired by an incredible true story, this poignant novel tells of one woman’s fight for love, life and hope during a time of unimaginable darkness.

Ana Kaminski is pushed through the iron gates of Auschwitz beside her frightened young friend Ester Pasternak. As they reach the front of the line, Ana steps forward and quietly declares herself a midwife – and Ester her assistant. Their arms are tattooed and they’re ordered to the maternity hut. Holding an innocent new-born baby, Ana knows the fate of so many are in her hands, and vows to do everything she can to save them.

When two guards in their chilling SS uniforms march in and snatch a blond-haired baby from its mother it’s almost too much for Ana to bear. Consoling the distraught woman, Ana realises amidst the terrible heartache there is a glimmer of hope. The guards are taking the healthiest babies and placing them with German families, so they will survive. And there are whispers the war is nearly over… Ana and Ester begin to secretly tattoo little ones with their mother’s numbers, praying one day they might be reunited.

Then, early one morning, Ana notices the small bump under Ester’s thin striped clothing.

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The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent

In The Heretic’s Daughter, young Sarah Carrier watches her mother, Martha, become caught up in the Salem witch trials. Martha refuses to give in to the accusations against her, even when the situation becomes increasingly dangerous. The story is told through Sarah’s eyes and focuses heavily on the difficult relationship—and deep bond—between mother and daughter. Also read Debut Books So Good You’ll Forget They’re First Books


Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Martha’s courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.
Kathleen Kent is a tenth generation descendant of Martha Carrier. She paints a haunting portrait, not just of Puritan New England, but also of one family’s deep and abiding love in the face of fear and persecution.

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The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour

The Walking Drum follows Kerbouchard, a young man traveling across Europe and the Middle East during the 12th century. His journey takes him through battles, slavery, castles, Constantinople, and dangerous encounters as he searches for knowledge, adventure, and answers about his father. It’s much more of a big historical adventure than L’Amour’s usual Westerns.


Louis L’Amour has been best known for his ability to capture the spirit and drama of the authentic American West. Now he guides his readers to an even more distant frontier—the enthralling lands of the twelfth century.
 
Warrior, lover, and scholar, Kerbouchard is a daring seeker of knowledge and fortune bound on a journey of enormous challenge, danger, and revenge. Across Europe, over the Russian steppes, and through the Byzantine wonders of Constantinople, Kerbouchard is thrust into the treacheries, passions, violence, and dazzling wonders of a magnificent time.
 
From castle to slave galley, from sword-racked battlefields to a princess’s secret chamber, and ultimately, to the impregnable fortress of the Valley of Assassins, The Walking Drum is a powerful adventure in an ancient world that you will find every bit as riveting as Louis L’Amour’s stories of the American West.

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Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See

In Daughters of the Sun and Moon, three Chinese women arrive in Los Angeles in 1870 with very different lives and hopes. Dove wants love, Petal wants freedom, and Moon wants justice. As anti-Chinese violence grows around them, their lives become connected, and they have to find ways to survive and build lives for themselves in a country that often treats them as outsiders. Also check out 19 Historical Fiction Books With Over One Million Goodreads Ratings



Beloved New York Times bestselling author Lisa See draws on the vibrancy and turmoil of post-Civil War Los Angeles to tell the story of three Chinese women who managed to survive and, eventually, thrive, despite all odds.

In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal’s father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain – America – where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many. 

Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined. 

Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance and ability to ‘eat bitterness,’ discover their voices, find freedom and connect through solace and friendship. Together they are daughters of the sun and moon.

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The Journeyer by Gary Jennings

The Journeyer is an imagined version of Marco Polo’s travels, filling in the parts of his life that history never recorded. Marco leaves Venice and travels across the medieval world toward the court of Kublai Khan, encountering different cultures, religions, wars, relationships, and dangers along the way. It’s a huge, detailed adventure that follows more than two decades of travel.



Marco Polo was nicknamed “Marco of the millions” because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied “I have not told the half of what I saw and did.”

Now Gary Jennings has imagined the half that Marco left unsaid as even more elaborate and adventurous than the tall tales thought to be lies. From the palazzi and back streets of medieval Venice to the sumptuous court of Kublai Khan, from the perfumed sexuality of the Levant to the dangers and rigors of travel along the Silk Road, Marco meets all manner of people, survives all manner of danger, and, insatiably curious, becomes an almost compulsive collector of customs, languages and women.

In more than two decades of travel, Marco was variously a merchant, a warrior, a lover, a spy, even a tax collector – but always a journeyer, unflagging in his appetite for new experiences, regretting only what he missed. Here – recreated and reimagined with all the splendor, the love of adventure, the zest for the rare and curious that are Jennings’s hallmarks – is the epic account, at once magnificent and delightful, of the greatest real-life adventurer in human history.

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The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

The Killer Angels recreates the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Instead of following just one person, the book moves between major figures on both the Union and Confederate sides. You see the decisions they make, what they believe they’re fighting for. Also read 9 Books So Heartbreaking, Readers Can’t Stop Still Thinking About Them



In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Shattered futures, forgotten innocence, and crippled beauty were also the casualties of war. The Killer Angels is unique, sweeping, unforgettable—a dramatic re-creation of the battleground for America’s destiny.

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The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks

In The Widow of the South, Carrie McGavock’s Tennessee home is turned into a Confederate field hospital during the Battle of Franklin. Surrounded by badly wounded soldiers, Carrie begins caring for them and finds a new purpose in the middle of the destruction. The novel is based on the real Carrie McGavock and her connection to the soldiers who died there. Also read 9 Best Historical Fiction Based on Real Stories to Add to Your TBR



Tennessee, 1864. On a late autumn day, near a little town called Franklin, 10,000 men will soon lie dead or dying in a battle that will change many lives for ever. None will be more changed than Carrie McGavock, who finds her home taken over by the Confederate army and turned into a field hospital. Taking charge, she finds the courage to face up to the horrors around her and, in doing so, finds a cause.

Out on the battlefield, a tired young Southern soldier drops his guns and charges forward into Yankee territory, holding only the flag of his company’s colours. He survives and is brought to the hospital. Carrie recognizes something in him – a willingness to die – and decides on that day, in her house, she will not let him.

In the pain-filled days and weeks that follow, both find a form of mutual healing that neither thinks possible.

In this extraordinary debut novel based on a true story, Robert Hicks has written an epic novel of love and heroism set against the madness of the American Civil War.

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The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

The Kitchen House begins when seven-year-old Lavinia, an Irish orphan, is brought to a Virginia plantation and raised among the enslaved people working in the kitchen house. They become her family, but because Lavinia is white, she is eventually pulled into the very different world of the plantation owners. Check out 9 Historical Fiction Audiobooks That Are 10/10 From Start to Finish


When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.

Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.

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The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

In The Lion Women of Tehran, Ellie and Homa become best friends as girls growing up in 1950s Iran. Their lives eventually move in different directions, but they reconnect as young women while Iran is going through major political changes. Also read 8 Historical Fiction Books I’m Begging Your Book Club to Read Before 2026 Ends



In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing her and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of having a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. As Ellie enjoys her new popularity at the best girls’ high school in Iran, her memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, Homa’s sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transform our lives.

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