Douglas & McIntyre has acquired English-language Canadian rights to a memoir by Lucia Jang, co-written by Susan McClelland. The Stars in Between the Sun and the Moon is Jang’s account of her defection from North Korea. The pseudonymous author first told her story to CBC Television’s The Fifth Estate in November.

Now a single mother in Toronto, Jang will detail the perils involved in escaping North Korea’s totalitarian regime. Jang will work with translator Soohyun Nam, a Korean-Canadian refugee lawyer, who says the majority of North Korean defectors are women.

“The experiences cover the whole range of events that could possibly happen to a North Korean woman trying to survive “” the loss of a child, imprisonment in modern-day concentration camps, near-death experience within prison, and being trafficked into a forced marriage for her survival,” Nam said in a statement.

McClelland, an award-winning author and journalist, has written six books about human rights and environmental issues. Her 2008 book, Bite of the Mango (Annick Press), was published in more than 35 countries, and her reporting on Ugandan militant Joseph Kony was turned into a documentary film for BBC Panorama.