This book has a strong educational agenda, but it still tells a compelling story of friendship across cultural barriers. Anna, an American girl, spent a good portion of her childhood growing up in Cairo where she befriended Layla, a neighbor. Layla and her family support and comfort Anna when her mother is diagnosed with, and ultimately dies of, breast cancer. As college students, Layla decides to study medicine while Anna studies photography in the US and struggles with the realization that she carries the same gene mutation for cancer than her mother carried. Each of them faces challenging decisions that are influences by family history and society's expectations. Anna flies back to Cairo when Layla's father is diagnosed with kidney failure.... just in time for the revolutionary unrest in spring 2012 to reach it's boiling point.