This book is about the war in Afghanistan. Although written for children, it doesn't spare much of the violence and pain of war. It is toned down a bit, but is still devastating. Najmah's brother and father are taken from their poor mountain home by the Taliban and Najmah and her mother are left alone, as the rest of the village flees to neighboring Pakistan. Najmah's mother is expecting a baby any day and cannot travel. The baby is born, but soon the war returns to their village, and it is bombed. Najmah's mother and infant brother are killed. Najmah is taken in by a villager's relative who is on his way to Pakistan with his family. Najmah's hair is cut and she is dressed like a boy for safety. After a dangerous and exhausting trip, they finally make it to one refugee center, but Najmah escapes to a second, the most likely place for her father and brother to find her. There she is taken in by an American woman who keeps a small school for the refugees while her Afghani husband works as a doctor in field hospitals. Eventually the American woman finds that her husband has most likely been killed and Nur, Najmah's brother shows up to tell her that their father was also killed.
We always hear of American casualties in these wars, but this book brings home the casualties of the common people in those countries.
This book isn't quite as good as Shabanu, but it is certainly close.
P.S. Later. There is one minor detail that keeps nagging at me. The way the American woman finds out that her husband has probably been killed is that there are several people who talk about a field hospital having been bombed and an American doctor having been killed. The problem is that, although he was trained in the U.S., her husband is/was Afghani. It seems strange to me that people would refer to him as an American doctor. I would think that they would think of him as an Afghani, not as an American.
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