Edith and her best friend Clarence move to New York. Each of them is on a journey of self-discovery. In Edith's case, she inadvertently speeds that journey by making the acquaintance of a homeless woman named Lulu, who turns out to be Edith's birth mother. Lulu had surrendered Edith for adoption twenty-one years before. To complicate matters further, Edith's boss, who is falling in love with her, may be her birth father.

THE STONE WOMAN, the third novel in Tariq Ali's Islamic Quartet, is about a family reunion at the palatial summer home of Iskender Pasha, the aging patriarch of an aristocratic Ottoman family.