American Girls

"The Sally sisters, raised in a rural Jehovah's Witness community in Arkansas, spent their teens and twenties moving between cities and towns in the South and Midwest, working difficult and poorly-paid jobs and falling in and out of relationships. Caught in an eternal sibling rivalry -- where Lori, younger by a year, protected bold, outgoing, reckless Sam -- the two women eventually married a pair of brothers and settled down in Elkhart, Indiana, just around the corner from each other. And it was there that their lives totally and violently diverged. Today, Sam is in federal custody, where she will remain for the next six years after pleading guilty to Financing Terrorism. In July of 2018, she and her children were plucked from a Kurdish refugee camp in Syria, where she landed after spending two years in Raqqa, shielding her children from airstrikes as her husband fought for ISIS. Sam's oldest son appeared in several Islamic State propaganda videos, and she participated in ISIS's practice of enslaving Yazidi women and children. Sam says her husband coerced her to move to Raqqa, but Lori-who quit her job and worked tirelessly to get Sam out of Syria-isn't so sure. American Girls combines an in-depth examination of Sam and Lori's lives with on-the-ground reporting from Syria and Iraq, providing readers with a rare glimpse into the world of American women who join ISIS. Interweaving deeply reported narrative drama with expert analysis, the book explores how the structures of subjugation and abuse experienced at home by women in the U.S. like Sam and Lori are the same structures that enable the rise of patriarchal societies like ISIS. Fascinating, resonant, and moving, American Girls is an unforgettable journey -- from small-town Arkansas to Raqqa, from domestic abuse to a militant terrorist organization -- all through the story of two close, complicated sisters"--