The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez

You know, I liked this book a lot and was going to write something crafty and witty, but Amazon just sums it up so well that I have again, just done a cut and paste from them.  The author has several interesting comments regarding America's involvement in Afghanistan and although this is a work of fiction, she lets her life experiences and thoughts come through in her writing. Meredith, thank you for this book!

"After hard luck and heartbreak, Sunny finally finds a place to call home—in the middle of an Afghanistan war zone. There, the thirty-eight-year-old serves up her American hospitality to the expats who patronize her coffee shop, including a British journalist, a “danger pay” consultant, and a wealthy and well-connected woman. True to her name, Sunny also bonds with people whose language and landscape are unfamiliar to most Westerners, but whose hearts and souls are very much like our own: the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son; and Yazmina, a young Afghan villager with a secret that could put everyone’s life in jeopardy. In this gorgeous first novel, New York Times bestselling author Deborah Rodriguez paints a stirring portrait of a faraway place where—even in the fog of political and social conflict—friendship, passion, and hope still exist."