In the wake of World War I, in Berlin, fascination with the occult was everywhere – in private séances, personalized psychic readings, communions with the dead – as people struggled to escape the grim reality of their lives. In the early 1930s, the most famous mentalist in the German capital was Erik Jan Hanussen, a Jewish mind reader who became so popular in Berlin that he rubbed elbows with high ranking Nazis, became close with top Storm Troopers, and even advised Hitler. Author and journalist Arthur Magida, The Nazi Séance: The Strange Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitler's Circle describes the unlikely rise and fall Hitler's Jewish clairvoyant.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born former member of the Dutch Parliament and the author of the international bestseller Infidel, was raised as a devout Muslim in Kenya. A feminist, political analyst, writer, and fierce critic of her former religion, she champions the West in what she insists must be a war against Islam.  Aafia Siddiqui, a native of Pakistan, moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience. A decade later, she returned to Pakistan, where her involvement with al-Qaeda, including her marriage to one of the 9/11 plotters, led the CIA to regard her as one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world.

Reconstructing the histories of these two women, author and journalist Deborah Scroggins, Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui  traces their origins to explain why they chose opposite paths and how each has risen to become revered and reviled as an international symbol of her beliefs.