Betty Mahmoody, who is both the protagonist and heroine of Not Without My Daughter, acts as the first-person narrator. A complex character, Betty is an American woman from Michigan who, in the mid-1980s, finds herself entangled in an ill-fated marriage with an Iranian-born anesthesiologist and osteopath nicknamed Moody. Betty’s character embodies the tensions that arise when her American background collides with the realities of post-revolutionary Iran. When she meets her husband, Moody, she does not have a college degree, but she subsequently enrolls in a community college to study industrial management. Betty is an ambitious, driven character who seeks to make the best of her life. Moody is her second husband; before marrying Moody, she had two sons in a previous marriage and eventually divorced her first husband.

In the initial chapters of the novel, Betty appears as an unwitting participant in a cultural experiment gone awry and precipitated by geopolitical circumstances: specifically, the Iran-Iraq War. As the narrative unfolds, Betty’s character undergoes a profound transformation. Her resilience emerges as a defining trait, steering her through the 18-month experience in Iran as she plans her escape. Thus, Betty is a dynamic protagonist who navigates a landscape in which personal agency intersects with geopolitical forces.