Read this local author's book with us! A story set in Tucson about an Iranian woman finding freedom

To write the novel "Veil of Roses," Laura Fitzgerald crept out of her Tucson home to the family's guest house, tiptoeing on creaky wood floors as her two young children slept. 

If they woke up, she didn't get to write that day. 

Lucky for us, they kept sleeping. 

At least long enough for Fitzgerald to write the book. 

This month, #ThisIsTucson is launching its first book club. And we are pumped. 📚 📖 🤓

We'll be reading local author Fitzgerald's novel "Veil of Roses," published by Bantam Books in 2007. 

It ticks all of our boxes: It's about a woman experiencing independence for the first time. It's written by a Tucson author. And the story itself happens in Tucson. Check. Check. And check. 

How this will work: 

If you want to be part of the #ThisIsTucson Book Club, head on over to Facebook and join us. Each Wednesday, we'll post questions in that group related to a set number of chapters we'll read together over the course of a week. By the time the Tucson Festival of Books rolls around Saturday, March 11 through Sunday, March 12, we'll have read and discussed the entire book in our Facebook group.

This week, we'll read chapters one through six and then post discussion questions on Wednesday, Feb. 4. You can find the book online at Amazon.com. If you want to purchase it locally, we suggest calling the book stores in advance. Bookmans at 6230 E. Speedway and 3733 W. Ina Road had a few copies, but the one at 1930 E. Grant Road did not. 

Author Laura Fitzgerald will join us throughout, sharing her insights and making an appearance at the meet-and-greet that will conclude the first month of book club. 

We want this to be an open place of discussion, so feel free to share your own thoughts as you read — but please keep it kind. 

Also, no promises for a spoiler-free zone. This is a book club, so we'll be talking about the book. 

And we think you're gonna love it. 

A bit more about the book: 

The main character, Tamila Soroush, is a 27-year-old Iranian woman with a shot at a new life in America (Tucson to be exact). The only catch: She has to marry to stay here — a fate she didn't want in Iran and doesn't really want in Tucson. 

As the expiration on Tamila's three-month visa looms, she finds herself with freedoms she never imagined — people-watching in the Starbucks on University Boulevard, walking to English classes at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library, marveling at the beauty of Sabino Canyon. 

"I probably hammed it up," Fitzgerald, 49, says of Tucson's prominence in the book. "I would go down to Fourth Avenue and take notes on people passing by. Some of the cameo characters are based on people I actually saw, but plenty of it is totally made up. It does have that Tucson feel." 

Fitting, since Fitzgerald has lived here for at least 20 years and chose the area of town she lives in to be Tamila's stomping ground. 

Why the book is about an Iranian woman: 

Fitzgerald started working on the book not long after 9/11. As the United States prepared for war in Iraq, she found herself unable to find any lighter novels about people from the Middle East. She says she wrote her book in the style of a rom-com, using memoirs she read about Iranian women and her own family's experiences as a reference. 

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Her husband's parents sent him and his four siblings from Iran to the U.S. when he was only 10, just before the overthrow of the Shah. In the family and the food, she discovered a zest for living. 

"The Persian culture in general has this love of life, and that is as big of a part of their history as anything else," Fitzgerald says. "Getting to see that and all of the opportunities that open up simply because you happen to be in this country versus that country makes you think, 'Wow.'" 

Fitzgerald observed firsthand the transition of an Iranian woman to American life, watching as her sister-in-law made the move from Iran to Tucson. Although Tamila, the character in this book, is not based directly on her sister-in-law, she did get a chance "to see America through her eyes." 

"I got a new appreciation," she says. "I had never thought about the freedoms I had. I just had them. I was born into them. But then I got to observe someone. And that's what the reader gets to do, observing someone new to America, experiencing all of the freedoms that we take for granted." 

Laura Fitzgerald, by the way, is a pen name, picked to respect her family's privacy and her own, following a public stint as a small-town newspaper reporter. 

This book club just got real: 

As of last week, Tamila couldn't even make it into the U.S. 

"She would have been stopped at the airport," Fitzgerald says. 

We actually picked this novel for our book club read before any of these executive orders banned refugees and other immigrant from seven countries from entering the U.S. That list includes Iran.  

Suddenly, our book club pick is super relevant. Keep current policies in mind as you read, and we'll talk later. 

"It's a book about love. It's a book about freedom, and it's a book about the love of freedom," she says. "People who enjoy it hopefully can transfer some of the good feelings they have about Tami to other Iranians and Middle Easterners who would certainly love to have the sort of opportunity she had." 

Fitzgerald's own family is not directly impacted by the ban. All of her husband's family now live in the U.S. as American citizens, although the extended family does still own property in Iran, Fitzgerald says. 

Tamila is not every Iranian woman, and Fitzgerald did get some critiques about the naiveté of the character. 

"The Iranian women who didn't like the book felt that Tami was too naive, which I think is a very fair point," Fitzgerald says. "Iranian women are very sophisticated and extremely well-educated ... but that was the point. She had to be naive to experience a lot of these things about America." 

More on how Fitzgerald became an author: 

"Veil of Roses" is Fitzgerald's first book, written in a four-month span while her kids snoozed. She has since written the sequel "Dreaming in English," the four-book series "Lost in America" series and another novel titled "One True Theory of Love." 

Fitzgerald's career started in journalism, with a stint at a small-town paper in Wisconsin and then about a year-and-a-half at the Casa Grande Dispatch. She says journalism gave her a lesson in human nature — one she still relies on when writing her novels. 

She left and spent about eight years working at Intuit, the personal finance and tax software company, with a plan to work on a novel that remains unpublished. 

The real novel-writing came when she left that job to stay home with her two children. 

"I sort of said to myself, 'I'll become a stay-at-home parent as long as I have this as my creative outlet,'" she says. "And I thought if I didn't make something happen when they started kindergarten, I would go back to work. Thankfully, ("Veil of Roses") sold and allowed me to keep writing." 

So she told a story inspired by a place she knew and people she loved. 

"I wrote it because I just felt like people show know that most people all want the same things in life: Freedom, love, a chance to raise a family, the opportunity to have happiness," she says. "Everything that is the American Dream, everyone else in the world wants."