A Second Look

Book excerpt: Caught in a struggle to navigate the often-conflicting demands of faith, career, and relationships, Elizza BenTaleb is a young Muslim woman in her final semester obtaining MBA. While dreaming to open up a clean energy business to help people in Libya on the one hand, she is trying to mother her four sisters, each divergent in their own ways – from uber-conservative to Insta-famous Hijabi – on the other. Elizza's life takes a complicated turn when a successful Libyan businessman, Firas Tarseen, is hired for a semester to give lectures at the university. Elizza has some less than genial encounters with the fellow, but can't seem to avoid bumping into him everywhere. Can they overlook their first impressions of each other to realize that they may have more in common than they know?