A shocking tale of two women torn apart by arranged marriage, two women whose love gives them the strength to survive.

“Nightingale” is an amazing and sometimes brutal tale of the fate of women forced into arranged marriages and abducted beyond the reach of Western law. It is also a romance that tells the tale of two women whose souls connect at the deepest level. For one that love is the driver to help women in desperate circumstances. For the other, it is the will to survive a despicable situation, and to live through anguish and pain.

Andrea Bramhall’s novel is timely. Too many women are forced into marriage and taken to countries where they can be treated as slaves or held prisoner. Women are being murdered for disobeying their husbands or fathers. Finding and retrieving those women and children once they have left the West is an almost impossible task.

Our heroine, Hazaar, vibrates off the page in her passion and intensity. Her strength of character, her will to survive, and the desperate choices she has to make, resonate. She wants to follow her heart, she knows that is the right decision for her happiness and sanity. But when faced with the choice of saving her father’s life she cannot make the selfish choice. The consequences could literally destroy her.

Charlie is a woman who has been wronged, but she rises above her own anguish, channeling her energy into saving women like Hazaar. She is a woman on a mission, dreaming of finding the woman she loves and using her skills to rescue other women from a similar fate.

Brilliantly written, the main characters and their supporting cast are skillfully drawn. The plot is cleverly planned and the switches between the past and present, the consulate, and the compound are well handled.  It is a tale of suspense that ingeniously keeps the pages turning, first to know Hazaar’s decision, and second to know her fate.

Ms. Bramhall has carefully avoided making this an attack on the Muslim faith. The drivers of these criminal acts are men who lust for power and wealth. It is a story about patriarchy and ignorance, power, and abuse. Of men who use the Sharia laws for their own gain and women who are powerless to stop them.

This book will move you to tears of despair and fill you with the joy of true love. There aren’t enough stars to recommend it highly enough.