Finding Fran

Attending high school in 1950s suburban Los Angeles, Lois Wendland (now Lois Banner) and Fran Huneke (now Noura Durkee) had been best friends, with their minds on books and boys. But while Banner became an academic feminist, Fran converted to Islam and moved to Egypt. Forty years later, Banner sought out her lost friend, hoping to understand why they had taken such different paths in life. Banner charts the trajectories of their diverging lives. Her search for clues to the origins of their opposing choices takes her to Los Angeles, Alaska, New York, New Mexico, and to Alexandria, Egypt, where…