And then there was the awkward and ineffective support provided by the United States. This element emerges in Abouzeid’s portrayal of the frustration of the Hazm Movement, an American-funded rebel alliance that gathered intelligence on the activities and locations of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State, both of which were designated terrorist organizations by the United States.

For months the United States did not act on the intelligence. Then, when it began attacking jihadist positions in Syria in 2014, it gave Hazm no warning, leaving its fighters and agents exposed to retaliation.

Hazm was soon overpowered by Jabhat al-Nusra, yielding its American-supplied weapons to the Qaeda affiliate — a process resembling what has played out repeatedly since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq, where many American partners have been bedeviled by desertion and battlefield defeat. A Hazm operative shares a scalding critique, telling Abouzeid that “Russia is more honorable and trustworthy than the United States, because at least it is really standing alongside its ally.”

Abouzeid was briefly in New York this month. She sat down to discuss her reporting, and that word in her book’s subtitle — “hope.”

You covered Syria from the beginning, before protest seemed likely and when uprising seemed impossible. How did you select characters from the many people you met?

I ended up with these characters because I felt that although they are individuals, each of their stories illuminated larger truths. I wanted to use characters and their experiences as vehicles, for example, to explain what happened to a Free Syrian Army battalion or the Islamization of the uprising. So I chose characters who would help a reader understand certain elements of the Syrian conflict.

“No Turning Back” illuminates experiences and points of view of female characters, including girls who came of age during war. Such voices are not prominent in news reports. Was it a mission to include them?