The Freedom Seeker
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In one girl’s relentless search for home and safety, The Freedom Seeker takes readers on a daring journey of displacement and immigration. Illuminated by the kindness of strangers across continents and the strength of the human spirit, renowned activist and award-winning documentarianRuchira Gupta has written a powerful tale of resilience, hope, and the enduring strength of familial love.
Twelve-year-old Simi Singh's life in Northern India is filled with love, family traditions, and ordinary worries about hockey competitions, school exams, and avoiding the snide remarks of her class nemesis. But when a single rock carrying a note crash through their window during their Id celebration, Simi’s life will shatter.
Her Sikh father and Muslim mother’s interfaith marriage is becoming a target of violent vigilantes. Faced with rising threats, they must make an impossible choice: stay and risk their lives, or flee their homeland. Simi’s father is the first of them to make the journey to the U.S., but when their petition to be reunited in America is denied, Simi and her mother are left with no choice but to attempt a perilous crossing through the Arizona desert with the help of a smuggler.
Throughout her nail-biting journey towards safety and belonging, Simi will face unthinkable danger— and when Simi and her mother are separated during the crossing, each led to believe the other is dead, she refuses to accept this fate. Alone in an unfamiliar and unforgiving land, she must summon all her courage and resourcefulness to survive, find her mother, and reunite her shattered family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gupta (I Kick and I Fly) follows one immigrant child's experience attempting a dangerous border crossing to seek refuge in this wrenching family story. Twelve-year-old field hockey player Simi Singh and her Punjabi family have happily lived in Chandigarh, India, all her life. Then her father is badly beaten by members of a conservative group that's advocating to ban interfaith marriages, including that of Simi's Hindu Sikh abbu and Muslim ammi. After Abbu applies for—and is denied—a visa to the U.S., he instead opts to travel there via the Donkey Express, "chartered planes that smuggle Punjabis to America illegally." Granted asylum in the U.S., Abbu works to send money back for Ammi and Simi's escape. But complications during her own journey to the U.S. find Simi separated from her mother in Mexico. Gupta powerfully exposes how othering occurs via frank prose that details the rapid escalation of prejudice rhetoric in Simi's neighborhood, the brutal conditions of the border crossing, and the cruel political bureaucracy Simi contends with during her travels. This sobering novel's optimistic and steadfast tone—highlighted through Simi's own self-determination, and in joyful instances of kindness and connection—rings true across grim depictions of loss. Ages 8–12.
