Karma
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4.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A BOOKLIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • An impossible first love. A girl caught between two worlds. A country on the verge of chaos.
“Epic and almost surreal in scope . . . [A] fast-paced whirlwind of startling images, action, and heartfelt emotion.”—National Public Radio
“A riveting, historically accurate, coming-of-age tale of gutsy survival, self-sacrifice, and love.”—Booklist, starred review
It is 1984, and fifteen-year-old Maya is on her way to India with her father. She carries with her the ashes of her mother, who recently committed suicide, and arrives in Delhi on the eve of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination and one of the bloodiest riots in the country’s history.
Maya is separated from her father and must rely upon the help of a young man she’s just met—the mysterious, kindhearted Sandeep—if she is to stay alive and make it home. But as her love for Sandeep begins to blossom, Maya must face the truth about her painful adolescence . . . if she’s ever to imagine her future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This epic novel, written in free verse poems in a diary format, straddles two countries and the clash of Indian cultures in the tale of 15-year-old Maya. Raised in Canada, Maya is the product of a marriage between her Hindu mother and Sikh father, a union that upset both families. Her 1984 trip to India with her father, after her mother's suicide, thrusts her life into further chaos when her father disappears during riots that follow Indira Gandhi's assassination. In her first YA novel, Ostlere (Lost: A Memoir) makes Maya's subsequent muteness believable in the wake of the many traumas she endures. Burdened with guilt over her parents' fate, as well as that of a Sikh man burned alive in front of her, she asks, "Is my silence unfounded too?/ No. I do not deserve to be found./ Or loved." A family in a desert town takes Maya in, and 17-year-old Sandeep (who contributes kinetic, lovestruck journal entries) takes special interest in her. In contrast to the hatred, mistrust, and violence, the friendship and then love between Maya and Sandeep offers hope, rebirth, and renewal. Ages 12 up.
