After reading “The Kite Runner,” Khaled Hosseini’s story-telling abilities left me speechless. The powerful portrait he gave of Afghanistan through the lives of two young boys and the element of redemption that saturates the story were enough to sell me on him as an author. Then came “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” tells the story of two girls who come from very different backgrounds but end up with the same future. Mariam grows up in a small shack with her mother who constantly made Mariam feel unworthy because she was an illegitimate child. Mariam’s father, Jalil, abandoned her and her mother and married another woman, but made the occasional obligatory trip to see his daughter.

In an effort to further Mariam’s shame after her mother commits suicide, Jalil forces her, at the age of 15, to marry a shoemaker named Rasheed who is much older than she. Hosseini gives readers every reason to hate Rasheed, from his constant physical and verbal abuse toward his wife to his oppressive power over her.

As readers are caught up in Mariam’s hopelessness, Hosseini introduces Laila, a girl who is much younger than Mariam and who seems to have found true love from a childhood friend name Tariq. However, Laila’s life soon becomes much like Mariam’s when Tariq’s family leaves Afghanistan and, shortly after, she loses both of her parents to the war.

In an interesting and gruesome twist of fate, Laila, at age 14, becomes Rasheed’s second wife and becomes another victim to his abuse and oppression. As these two women both become prey to Rasheed’s animalistic desires, their friendship and dependence on each other becomes their survival.

While somewhat melodramatic at times, Hosseini depicts a very true and awful picture of what Afghan women and children face on a daily basis. As the war has raged on for several years, many Americans seemed to have forgotten the condition of life and the danger that is still so real to Afghans, and in particular Afghan women, which leads them to act in rash and unpredictable ways.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns,” much like “The Kite Runner,” shows the power of love, justice, fear and redemption that will leave you with a breathtaking reminder of flawed humanity at its core.