If you thought you knew everything there is to know about beauty schools, you haven’t seen anything like this. In “Kabul Beauty School,” author Deborah Rodriguez-Turner with Kristin Ohlson shares a journey you can’t even imagine. It’s not an adventure I’d want because I’m too scared to leave the United States, but it’s fascinating to read about it from a woman who has guts.

At the age of twenty-six, Deborah divorced her first husband. She had two children and she couldn’t identify him, but she always seemed restless. She tried college. She tried to be a correctional officer. She tried to party. She tried religion. With no religious background, she jumped straight into a Pentecostal church and married a traveling preacher who turned out to be abusive.

His second marriage turned out to be a bad situation. Deborah sent her children to live with her mother and she began to search for the safest way to escape this relationship. She began to go on mission trips, convincing her husband that she would be a good help to him when she traveled. Later, she also got involved with the relief efforts of the humanitarian agencies and really enjoyed it.

On her first solo trip to Afghanistan, she felt a bit uncomfortable because all the other volunteers were educated medical professionals. To her pleasant surprise, when she was introduced as a hairdresser, everyone was delighted that she could help them feel refreshed in the silly desert.

When she returned home, she began to think about how she could make a difference in the lives of Middle Eastern women by opening a beauty school and teaching them to be hairdressers.

Deborah collected product donations, found someone to ship the product to, and networked to make the dream a reality. Someone put her in touch with a lady who had already opened a school and suggested they join, so she agreed. She just wanted to help.

Deborah’s husband was very controlling and began to threaten her so she wouldn’t leave him. She made up her mind and left.

Once she opened her school, her friends convinced her that if she planned to stay permanently, she would need a husband. She agreed to enter into an arranged marriage as a second wife.

Much of the book introduces the reader to the lives of women at school. Unfortunately, he discovered that he couldn’t help everyone because there were so many sad stories and cultural differences that were beyond his control. She learned to be grateful to those for the differences she could make. As of the book’s publication in 2007, she was still married to her Afghan husband and continues to live there. The school had to overcome many obstacles, but she made a difference.

I think the main point of the book is that you have something to offer wherever you live.