An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most brutal and mysterious dictatorships and the harrowing story of a woman's struggle to escape captivity and lead her family to freedom. Growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions held captive by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home near the border with China gave her a glimpse into the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom. When famine broke out in the 1990s, she began to question and realize that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Faced with the oppression, poverty, and starvation she experienced, how could her country be, as she had been told, "the best on the planet"? At seventeen, she decided to leave North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would take twelve years before she was reunited with her family.