A Thousand Splendid Suns

Poor, uneducated Mariam is terrified and only fifteen years old when she is shipped off to Kabul to marry a troubled man thirty years her senior. Nearly two decades later, pretty fifteen-year-old Laila finds herself in the same situation when her intellectual parents are killed by a stray Mujahideen bomb. Forced to forget the passionate love of her life, a boy she's known since childhood, Laila has no choice but to join that same loveless household with shy Mariam and the bitter husband they now share. In time, however, orphaned Laila and childless Mariam form a friendship that makes them both sisters and mother and daughter to one another. When children are born into this household, the situation gets worse and worse - from shootings and bombings on the street, to physical abuse and starvation at home - and the women are put to phenomenal tests of endurance and strength. In scene after suspenseful scene, Hosseini shows us just how a woman's love for her family can motivate her to overcome the most daunting obstacles, can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice. In the end, we see, it is love - or even love's memory - that is often the key to survival.