How do three young people-all with Pakistani backgrounds but coming from very different worlds-wind up face to face in a jihadi training camp on the edge of Mosul? Anita is a denizen of Karachi's biggest slum, contending with the everyday indignities of poor girls. Monty belongs to Pakistan's private-school elite, but an angry and alluring classmate awakens him to the emptiness of his pampered life. Sunny has grown up in the south of England, navigating immigrant-parent expectations and adopted-country racism. The Runaways follows these remarkable characters through journeys shaped-like so many coming-of-age stories today-by the dislocations of inequality, the breakdown of community, and the siren songs of religion and social media. These three don't seem to have much in common, aside from the vulnerability and longing of youth. And yet their lives converge in the Iraqi desert, a place where life and death walk hand in hand and where their closely guarded secrets force them to make a terrible choice.