The Taliban are cutting off the hands of men who have been caught stealing. It turns out to be a public display of punishment. One day the girls follow a crowd into a stadium, thinking it is a football match. Shauzia confesses that she is saving money so that she can go to France. With the money they make, the girls buy bulk cigarettes and chewing gum to sell off of trays.

Shauzia convinces Parvana to make better money with her at the graveyard, where they dig up bones for a man who buys them by the pound. It turns out to be Shauzia, a former classmate of hers who is also disguised as a boy. One day, Parvana recognizes the face of another boy in the market. Parvana begins to work as a boy and runs her father's stall in the market. They dress Parvana in her dead brother's clothes so that she can buy groceries and work. Soon, she and Parvana's mother plan to start a secret school in the house and write a magazine that will collect Afghan women's stories, which they will smuggle to Pakistan to publish. Weera, a former physical education teacher and friend of Parvana's mother, comes to stay with the family to help run the household. Parvana's mother becomes depressed, lying speechless on a thin mattress. Because women are not allowed out of the house without a related male, the family is left without a source of income. Parvana and her mother go to the prison to beg for his freedom, and they are beaten by the guards and told to leave. One day a group of Taliban soldiers breaks into Parvana's house to arrest her father for having a foreign education. Her older brother Hossain was killed by a land mine at fourteen. Parvana loves school and learning, even though the Taliban has disallowed girls from receiving an education. Parvana’s parents are from old respected Afghan families and have foreign educations, though they have lost most of their wealth and possessions after years of war. Women must be covered in burqas at all times, and many forms of expression, like books and music, have been restricted. The Taliban, a group of religious extremists, is in control of Kabul and has enforced strict rules over the city.

Their family also includes Parvana's mother, her older sister Nooria, her younger sister Maryam, and her little brother Ali, all of whom are ordered by law to stay inside their one-room apartment. He also reads letters for a fee, as many people in the country are illiterate. She sits silently with her face covered in a chador scarf while her father, who has difficulty walking and needs her assistance, tries to sell off some of the family's household goods. The Breadwinneropens with eleven-year-old Parvana and her father at a market in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Deborah ellis the breadwinner trilogy