Sixteen-year-old Alia Kutbi has grown up in her father's bookstore. When he dies, her uncle Essam moves into the house and into the store. He has chosen a groom for her while Alia only wants to run the bookstore. To save her father's legacy and her own future, she must commit an unthinkable act of public rebellion, one that will either win her freedom or ruin her forever.

Set against Saudi Arabia in 1973, when King Faisal's oil embargo is remaking the country and the October War is on the radio every night, The Rosewater Bookstore is a coming-of-age novel about what a girl can hold onto when the men in her family decide her future.