A Tender Struggle

"A story about love, marriage, compromise, parenthood and the difference between the life one imagined and reality."*

Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer, a California-bred feminist, surfer, and aspiring journalist, met Ismail Suayah, sincere, passionate, kind, yet from a very different world. One of eight siblings born in an impoverished fishing village in Libya, Ismail was raised a Muslim--and his faith informed his life. When Krista and Ismail made the decision to become a family, she embarked on a journey she never could have imagined, an accidental jihad: a quest for spiritual and intellectual growth that would open her mind and, more important, her heart.

"A bold piece of writing (and thinking) by an incredibly brave woman." -Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Signature of All Things

"A moving, lyrical memoir."-Kirkus Reviews

"Candid and rich." -Good Housekeeping

"Unrelenting candor and gorgeous prose." -BookPage

"Krista Bremer has a very good story." -The New York Times Book Review

"A beautiful account of [Krista's] jihad, or struggle, to find peace within herself and within her marriage." -The Kansas City Star

"Lucid, heartfelt, and profoundly humane . . . Navigates the boundaries of religion and politics to arrive at the universal experience of love." -G. Willow Wilson, author of Alif the Unseen

"This is a memoir worth reading." -*Pittsburgh Post-Gazette