American military personnel found Parvana in a bombed-out school building, so they brought her back to their base as a suspected terrorist. Because she refused to speak, the interrogations continued day after day. During that time, Parvana escaped into her memories — her flashbacks serving to provide readers with further information about her past. With the information gleaned through those flashbacks, it was easy to see why Parvana didn’t feel comfortable talking to the soldiers who were interrogating her. Between her experiences under the oppressive Taliban regime and the further struggles her family faced in the time after the Taliban was ousted, she learned that people in power didn’t always tell the truth and that speaking freely often made things worse. Definitely an eye-opening book about what it means to grow up female in the Afghanistan and how the American military presence has both helped and hindered Afghanistan’s progress.