Mark and Reye Pacer, newly married in the late 1970's, struggle with career assignments to different countries. Mark heads to a Persian Gulf principality where he deals with American children caught in the crossfire of multicultural divorces. Hints of human trafficking rings disturb him.Reye settles into her job as a political officer at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran. A crisis looms between the Iranian government, supported by the U.S., and a religious leader known as the Ayatollah Khomeini.Mark worries about Reye's safety as he follows the ever worsening news detailing the threats to the U.S. embassy by radical Iranian students. Another worry irks him as he analyzes each phrase of her shortening letters to him. How attracted is she to her boss as they face the dangers together?And what about the attractive American woman he keeps meeting at embassy gatherings? What is her interest in him?The young couple deal with the new realities of the last decades of the twentieth century: two-career couples, job-dictated separations, and delayed parenthood. They examine their callings while growing global connections threaten ancient cultures.