The reader/writer connection wasn't successful for me in the early third of this book - there were too many times I found myself thinking about the writing style rather than the story.
It left me a big fan of the author and hungering to read everything she's written. But suspense, rather than violence, flavors the entire length of the book. The last chapters deal with characters we care about attempting to flee or survive the Muslim-Sikh-Hindu violence of 1947, and may be pretty hard going for some. I learned so much about Sikkhism and Punjabi culture in this story, and I did not feel the amount of history shared was excessive, as some other readers have. The battles between Roop and Satya, as well as Punjab's inevitable journey to being split in 1947 into Pakistan and India, are both compelling. What a harsh awakening lies in store for her, when she becomes the victim of Satya's power strategies, which even include taking custody of Roop's young children.
Roop at age 16 doesn't care about being married to an older man who already has a wife in the household she's only interested in being rich and having pretty clothes and servants, and has grown up believing it's always important to obey. She takes this out on Roop but as cruel as she can be, her misery to us is clear, as well as her shining intellect. Satya, Sarjdarji's first wife, is bitter after the embarrassment of many years of marriage to him without a child. The fact Shauna Singh Baldwin has created very real, and flawed, characters.
They face sexism from their fathers and husbands, always encouraged to say Yes, even when the result is hurtful. Through the lives of these women, the story of the desperate struggle of Sikhs to remain in their homeland of Punjab, is beautifully illustrated. For about a week and a half, I was utterly swept up in the world of Roop and Satya, the two wives of Sardarji Singh, a wealthy Sikh landowner who also works as an engineer for the British Indian government in 1940s Punjab. Wow! This may be the best Indian historical novel I've read to date.
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