Book excerpt: Despite facing years of abuse after arriving in Canada as a teenage bride in a hastily arranged marriage, nothing could stop Samra Zafar from pursuing her dreams At fifteen, Samra Zafar lives with her family in Pakistan and has big dreams: she will go to university and forge her own path in the world. Then, with almost no warning, her dreams evaporate when her parents arrange her marriage to a stranger in Canada. Her new husband and his family promise that the marriage and the move will be a fulfillment of her dreams. But as the walls of Zafar’s new home slowly become a prison, she realizes how deeply she has been betrayed. Desperate to get out and refusing to give up, she hatches an escape plan for herself and her two daughters. Somehow, she finds the strength to not only build a new future, but also to walk away from her past, ignoring the pleas of her family and risking cultural isolation by divorcing her husband. A Good Wife tells Zafar’s harrowing and inspiring story, following her from a young girl with big dreams to a woman who finds strength in the face of oppression and battles through to empowerment.