Laila is full of dreams and wonder as she spends her childhood chasing the azure blue skies of her hometown in Afghanistan. But with the onset of womanhood, Laila is forced to flee her hometown and abandon the promise of an education in an effort to survive the emergence to power of the Taliban in post-Soviet Afghanistan. Laila and the women around her must use ingenuity, strength, and a fierce resolve to survive the daily ministrations of a society seeking to keep them in the dark. Can Laila fight the drug abuse around her and find personal autonomy in a setting of forced docility? Through the atrocities committed against these women and the strength these same women must exhibit in order to survive, we see with poetic and searing insight the realities of everyday life: the daily lives, loves, and perseverance of truly remarkable women.