Patricia McArdle, a retired foreign service officer and Arlington resident, has won the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award in the general fiction category.
McArdle’s debut novel, “Farishta,” follows a female American diplomat who transfers to a remote outpost in Afghanistan, where she becomes a sort of guardian angel (“Farishta” means angel in the Dari language) to the refugee women fleeing the country’s violence.
McArdle will receive a publishing contract from Penguin Group, along with a $15,000 advance.