"Growing up in the San Fernando Valley with his two brothers, all K wants to be is 'a boy from L.A.,' all American. But K--the youngest, named after a Persian king--knows there's something different about himself. Like the way he feels about his closest friend, Johnny, a longing that he can't share with anyone. At home, K must navigate another confusing identity: that of the dutiful son of Iranian immigrants struggling to make a life for themselves in the United States. He tries to make his mother proud, live up to her ideal of a son. On Friday nights, K attends prayers at the local mosque with Baba, his father, whose violent affections distort K's understanding of what it means to be a man and how to love. When Baba takes the three brothers from their mother back to Iran, K finds himself in an ancestral home he barely knows. Returning to the Valley months later, K must piece together who he is, in a world that now feels as foreign to him as the one he left behind"--Dust jacket flap.
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