by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
This book is about a young woman in Afghanistan whose education is halted and whose family is threatened by the incursion of the Taliban. Initially the girl's life is disrupted as girls are no longer allowed to go to school. Then her older brother leaves for Pakistan to avoid being forced to join the Taliban and her father and mother leave for northern Afghanistan to avoid prosecution by the Taliban as her father was a government official prior to his retiremnt.
The young girl is left in Kabul with a young brother and several sisters. She worries about how they will survive and support themselves and comes up with the idea of sewing clothes and selling them to local stores. She doesn' know anything about sewing but her oldest sister, who is married but lives in Kabul, teaches her and her sisters how to sew and bead items.
The girl produces some dresses and then, escorted by her young brother, goes to seek orders from a local tailor. She succeeds and is so successful she ends up recruiting other women to help sew the dresses. This provides her family and also other women with money to survive. She later becomes involved with NGO's mentoring other women,
The book was written almost like a novel, with dialogue, etc. It is interesting to read about how creative people can be in very difficult circumstances. It is sad that after decades there is still no stability in Afghanistan.
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