Reviewed by Ruffina Oserio for Readers' Favorite

Shahin Samadi's memoir, Currents of Being, Volume I, follows the author’s life as he transitions from a privileged childhood in pre-revolutionary Iran to a hardworking reinventor in America. Samadi was born in 1960 to a high-ranking military officer in Tabriz, and spent his youth moving from one part of the country to another: Tehran, Shiraz, Bandar Pahlavi, Khorramabad, and Mashhad. He enjoyed the idyllic summers at a Caspian beach house and the village of Damash. In 1976, before he turned sixteen, he was sent to Washington, D.C. He was stranded when the revolution of 1979 disrupted his family support and later claimed his sister Shohreh, killed by regime agents while eight months pregnant. The author worked his way through George Washington University; he joined NASA and taught at Johns Hopkins. He later married Samira and founded the technology firm INNOVIM, while raising two sons. He also found an adopted American “family” in people like Aziza, a caregiver, and Wes, the farm manager.

Shahin Samadi offers a captivating cultural commentary in Currents of Being, bringing to life the ancestral history of the Amarlu tribe alongside engaging portraits of Iranian cities, traditions, and cuisine. The river becomes a metaphor that not only reminds him of his father’s counsel by the riverside but also of insights from the works of Rumi, Coelho, Heraclitus, Khayyam, and Saadi. This memoir reads like a meditation on life, helping readers see that it is a current that propels us to destinations we might not have considered. In the end, we must learn to master our destinies by doing what really matters. The prose is crisp, and the author writes with details that make you linger over Faloodeh Shirazi, Shandiz lamb chops, and the Caspian's shores. The scenes are focused, and whether it is his father’s near-drowning, the revolutionaries burning their version of the “White House,” or a gunman outside the family guesthouse at midnight, the author captures every emotion with unwonted clarity. At the end of this memoir on resilience, you are left with the compelling message: we never step in the same river twice, yet memories keep us trapped in the current of life.