The Alterations LadyThe Alterations Lady

"When the journalist Cindy Miller met Lailoma Shahwali, who was altering her daughter's wedding dress, she assumed their interactions would be brief. But in Lailoma she found not just a seamstress, but a survivor who would open up about her remarkable experiences in her native Afghanistan. In recollections shared over warm tea with cardamom, frozen walnuts, and mulberries, Lailoma offers both an entry into a colorful pre-Taliban Afghanistan, where, despite being a girl, she pursued an education and worked toward becoming a doctor, as well as a stark portrait of what came next, when the Taliban seized her beloved country, stripped her of her hard-won rights, terrorized her family, and brutally murdered her husband. An account of triumph against all odds, Lailoma's fight to protect her young son and support her family takes them on a dangerous mountain escape into Pakistan and then to the United States in search of sanctuary and opportunity"--