One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor's surgery and announces, "I need to have an abortion." She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life. Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kazanci men die in their early forties, so it is a house of women, including Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered her clairvoyant abilities; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. When Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long-hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge. "Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking... will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages," Sunday Express. "A beautiful book, the finest I have.".