Kirkus Best Nonfiction Title of 2023

"Snyder shows us how to summon the courage to imagine in a cruel and dangerous world. A beautiful book." --Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Rogues and Empire of Pain

"A gorgeous memoir that parses the patriarchy with an endearing frankness as fierce as it is, astonishingly, forgiving." --Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus

For decades, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is her own inspiring story, a "bracing . . . glittering testimony" (Washington Post) to writing as a lifeline, the power and mutability of story, and learning to forgive.

When eight-year-old Rachel's mother died, her distraught father thrust the family into extreme evangelicalism. After a childhood marked by silence and rage, teenage Rachel became outwardly furious--and rebellious. She was expelled from school and home at age sixteen. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually travelling the globe.

Survival became her reporter's beat. In places like India, Tibet, Niger, and Cambodia, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In country after country, she found people choosing hope over despair. When she returned to the States with a family of her own, it was with a deeper appreciation for life's complexity, a distinctly generous approach to difficult subject matter, and a chance for healing from the most unexpected place.