Rebekah Sanderlin's father lived frugally, saving money and working hard for decades. He retired at 50 but then lived in what Sanderlin calls a "monastic frugality prison" before dying at 58.

Rebekah Sanderlin has never been to Afghanistan, and yet she says the war-torn nation of 39 million has “permeated every single part of our lives’’ for the past two decades.