Spring, 2023.

Each season, Hoopla chooses a Spotlight Selection and produces materials like discussion guides, read-a-like suggestions, book cub meeting planners, and exclusive author interviews to help you get the most out of your reading experience.

The Spring 2023 Spotlight Selection, In the Time of Our History by Susanne Pari, is available to stream or download as an ebook or audiobook with no waitlists or holds. Everyone can start reading or listening right away.

Set between San Francisco and New Jersey in the late-1990s, In the Time of Our History is a story about the universal longing to create a home in this world-and what happens when we let go of how we’ve always been told it should look.

Twelve months after her younger sister Anahita’s death, Mitra Jahani reluctantly returns to her parents’ home in suburban New Jersey to observe the Iranian custom of “The One Year.” Ana is always in Mitra’s heart, though they chose very different paths. While Ana, sweet and dutiful, bowed to their domineering father’s demands and married, Mitra rebelled, and was banished.

Caught in the middle is their mother, Shireen, torn between her fierce love for her surviving daughter and her loyalty to her husband. Yet his callousness even amid shattering loss has compelled her to rethink her own decades of submission. And when Mitra is suddenly forced to confront hard truths about her sister’s life, mother and daughter reach a new understanding-and forge an unexpected path forward.