A stunning memoir of personal rebellion and political awakening from a young woman raised to be loyal to a brutal regime—and the unimaginable cost of choosing freedom

Every day at school, Loubna Mrie pledged allegiance to Bashar al-Assad. His portrait hung over every blackboard, and her textbooks reminded her that, without the president, Syria would fall into chaos. Her family, part of the Alawite minority that ruled the country, revered him. Her grandfather helped bring the Assad family to power; her father, a formidable businessman with close ties to the regime, ruled their household with absolute authority. In her world, loyalty was survival. Dissent was betrayal.

But everything changed in 2011, when the Arab Spring reached Syria and Loubna stumbled into an anti-government protest. What she witnessed—the courage, the blood, the brutality—ignited something in her that would not be extinguished. She joined the resistance, smuggling supplies to rebels and risking her life as a photojournalist documenting the war for Reuters. Her defiance would come at a devastating cost: her mother’s murder, her father’s disavowal, and the loss of her partner, American aid worker Peter Kassig, who was kidnapped and executed by ISIS.

Defiance is the unforgettable account of one woman’s fight for freedom—against a dictator, a father, and the weight of inherited belief. From the streets of Aleppo to exile in the United States, it offers an electrifying portrait of moral courage in a time of unimaginable violence. Told with clarity, fury, and grace, Defiance offers a rare, ground-level portrait of what it means to wake up, to resist, and to become.