Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. But her world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name --- Aryana Shepherd --- and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. New York, 2008: Forty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family.

For two decades, Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother and a peaceful villager. But her quiet life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found brutally murdered. A shocked Zeba is unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death. Her children swear she could not have committed such a heinous act. Kamal’s family is sure she did and demands justice. Barely escaping a vengeful mob, Zeba is arrested and jailed. As she awaits trial, she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have also led them to these bleak cells. Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer, these young ladies wonder, or has she been imprisoned, as they have been, for breaking some social rule?

Mahmoud's passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she's ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister's family in England.

In Kabul, 2007, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. A century earlier, her great-aunt, Shekiba, saved herself and built a new life the same way. Crisscrossing in time, THE PEARL THAT BROKE ITS SHELL interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies.