"I'm a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and my brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. " Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen.

There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night. Unable to endure the pain and distress any longer, Nujood fled--not for home, but to the courthouse of the capital, paying for a taxi ride with a few precious coins of bread money.

When a renowned Yemeni lawyer heard about the young victim, she took on Nujood's case and fought the archaic system in a country where almost half the girls are married while still under the legal age. Since their unprecedented victory in April 2008, Nujood's courageous defiance of both Yemeni customs and her own family has attracted a storm of international attention. Recently honored alongside Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice as one of Glamour magazine's women of the year, Nujood now tells her full story for the first time.

From the Trade Paperback edition.