Mahru, an Iranian emigre now living in the New York area, tells the moving story of her family that spans a century: from her prosperous merchant grandfather who fled the Russian Revolution in 1917; to the comfortable life he secured for his wife and children in Ardebil; to the treachery of a Tudeh husband that placed her mother in penury; to her mother’s desperate attempts to preserve some kind of love and security for her three daughters as a servant in Teheran society, with results both tragic and heroic. Mahru goes on to live through the Khomeini revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and a final relocation to the West. Her grandfather's deathbed prediction that his granddaughters would give their mother “nine rubies” (nine grandchildren) in the midst of this turmoil is the impossible promise that provides the title of this uplifting book.