From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman.

Maryam had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished that she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life.

A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arrranged a traditional marriage to a fellow afghan, who turned out to be a brutal and violent man. Beaten, raped, and bused, Maryam found joy in the birth of a son. But then her cruel husband stole him away far beyond his mother's reach. For many long years she searched for her lost child, while civil war and Taliban oppression raged back home in Afghanistan.

Set against a landscape littered with tragic tales of horrific suffering, Jean Sasson, author of PRINCESS, chronicles the story of one resolute but tormented woman determined to achieve freedom and equality with men.