Koly is an Indian girl who is married off at the age of 13 as her family can't afford to feed 3 children. Her husband turns out to be gravely sick and not much older than herself. His parents needed the dowery to be able to afford a trip with their sick son to the Ganges, whose water is supposed to have healing power.Soon however he dies and Koly finds herself treated like a servant in the home of her parents-in-law, her only refuge her talent of stitching, she creates beautiful stiched images featuring the people in her life and events that happened to her.
This was a gripping and entertaining read, very saddening too. What I disliked a bit was the rhythm of the story with incredibly bad things happening one after the other in the first half and then in the second things gradually becoming all shiny and perfect. I don't think books for a younger audience have to be this stiffly stuctured.
Also my reading experience was shadowed by knowing that the author is western, writing from a western perspective about India. I wasn't sure whether anything was authentic or just the way some Americans think of and want to think of India.