Transnational crossings in Rajia Hassib’s work suggests both tension and sympathy between three generations of the Al-Menshawy family. The hybrid affiliations between Egyptian and American identifications destabilize any clear cut national boundaries of difference. Yet the central tension between the characters is in the realm of spiritual affinity, as the grandmother’s ritual practices, the mother’s spiritual wrestling and doubt after her son’s death, and the daughter Fatima’s discover of an Arab-American piety surface within the richly-textured pages of this novel. Paradoxically, these contrasting practices, the source of difference, are also the source of strength for these three generations of women, as the author destabilizes ideologies of nation and religion to reconceive feminine voicing and power. But despite the author Rajia Hassib’s inclusion of female spirituality in the novel, critics have offered surprisingly little analysis of these gendered forms of postcolonial belief. This gap in criticism ignores the range of Muslim perspectives, a postmodern plethora, where female protagonists shift their vantage points on religion due to trans-national pressures even as they find their voice within these altered trans-national sites. Pervading the novel, an alternative paradigm over women’s spiritual practices and agency flows, suggesting that beliefs can entrap and empower, often in ways that are unexpected, healing, or paradoxical. While religion is often mistakenly assumed to be a meager tool of nationalism, Rajia Hassib depicts how multifunctional beliefs are often contested, and sometimes resistance to dominant norms, since they can relate not only to national allegiance, but also resistant religious revivals. But what is most surprising is how these spiritual tensions work as a literary strategy to decolonize a historical legacy of European and dictatorial control over gendered bodies. Indeed, the spiritual action and ambivalence in this novel suggest a trans-national network of subversion. This delightful, literary well-spring reconceives feminist agency in Islamic terms, situated within variegated traditions and communities —for three women, powerful streams, outpouring from generational inheritance.