First published 2026
Marjan once lived as Rahima, a bacha posh raised as a boy until adulthood. She escaped an arranged marriage to a warlord and built a new identity as a soldier in the Afghan army. Now she has a daughter, Hawa, and everything to lose. When the Taliban retakes Kabul in 2021, Marjan watches twenty years of progress vanish overnight. The cosmopolitan city where women worked as doctors, journalists, and military officers transforms into a place of fear. Soraya, who commanded an all-female combat unit while wearing defiant red lipstick, becomes a fugitive whose own brother might betray her. Mina, a television broadcaster whose face everyone in Kabul knows, must decide whether to flee or resist the new regime. These women refuse to surrender the lives they fought to create. They face an impossible choice between safety and freedom, between protecting their families and defending their identities. Their stories reveal how ordinary people respond when history forces them to choose who they will become.
Genres: historical-fiction, military-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: chosen-one, found-family, resistance
Setting: Afghanistan, Kabul
Period: 2021
432 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: violence, war