Publisher's Synopsis
Una profunda y emotiva novela sobre dos amigas de la infancia, una de ellas lucha para sobrevivir la trata y la otra se encuentra en una misión por salvarla. Las vidas de dos niñas convergen solamente para cambiar una fatídica noche de 1993. Un desgarrador relato de amor, pérdida, perdón y perseverancia de la esperanza.
La conmovedora historia de la amistad de dos niñas, una luchando por sobrevivir al comercio de personas y la otra intentando salvarla. Dos niñas cuyas vidas tomaron caminos distintos una devastadora noche de 1993. India, 1986: Mukta, una niña de diez años, perteneciente a la casta Yellamma, ha llegado a la edad de tener que cumplir su destino convirtiéndose en prostituta del templo.
En un intento de hacerla escapar de este legado, la llevan con una familia que la acoge en Bombay. Allí descubre la amistad de Tara, la hija de ocho años de la familia de acogida que la ayuda a superar las heridas del pasado. Tara introduce a Mukta en un nuevo mundo: helados y dulces, poemas e historias, y una amistad que no había conocido nunca. En 1993, Mukta es secuestrada en la habitación de Tara.
Once años después, Tara todavía se culpa de lo que pasó y se embarca en un viaje en busca de Mukta que la llevará a descubrir secretos de su propia familia. Desde un pequeño pueblo de la India a la bulliciosa Bombay, Los Ángeles y vuelta atrás, en medio del brutal mundo del tráfico de personas, este es un retrato conmovedor de la amistad, una historia de amor, traición y redención que resiste la prueba del paso del tiempo.
A sweeping and emotional novel about two childhood friends--one struggling to survive the human slave trade and the other on a mission to save her--two girls whose lives converge only to change one fateful night in 1993. A harrowing tale of love, loss, forgiveness and the perseverance of hope.
In the spirit of Khaled Hosseini, Nadia Hashimi and Shilpi Somaya Gowda comes this powerful debut from a talented new voice--a sweeping, emotional journey of two childhood friends in Mumbai, India, whose lives converge only to change forever one fateful night.
India, 1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old village girl from the lower caste Yellama cult has come of age and must fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute, as her mother and grandmother did before her. In an attempt to escape her fate, Mukta is sent to be a house girl for an upper-middle class family in Mumbai. There she discovers a friend in the daughter of the family, high spirited eight-year-old Tara, who helps her recover from the wounds of her past. Tara introduces Mukta to an entirely different world--one of ice cream, reading, and a friendship that soon becomes a sisterhood.
But one night in 1993, Mukta is kidnapped from Tara's family home and disappears. Shortly thereafter, Tara and her father move to America. A new life in Los Angeles awaits them but Tara never recovers from the loss of her best friend, or stops wondering if she was somehow responsible for Mukta's abduction.
Eleven years later, Tara, now an adult, returns to India determined to find Mukta. As her search takes her into the brutal underground world of human trafficking, Tara begins to uncover long-buried secrets in her own family that might explain what happened to Mukta--and why she came to live with Tara's family in the first place.
Moving from a traditional Indian village to the bustling modern metropolis of Mumbai, to Los Angeles and back again, this is a heartbreaking and beautiful portrait of an unlikely friendship--a story of love, betrayal, and, ultimately, redemption.
