by Veera Hiranandani, 258 pages, Grades 6 and up

Twelve year old Nisha is keeping a diary, but she is writing as though each entry is a letter to her mother who died giving birth to her younger brother. In India in 1947 the British, who had colonized India, relinquished their control. In this transition India divided into two separate nations (India and Pakistan) forcing all Muslims into Pakistan and Hindus living on the land that would become Pakistan into the part that would remain India. For Nisha it means leaving the family home and crossing a new border to a new town far from what she knows, which would be difficult enough for any young person. The very sad history of this time, though, makes this journey even more fraught with terror. Some groups of people, angry about what was happening in the country, committed horrible acts of violence against their fellow countrymen. Hindus killing Muslims, Muslims killing Sikhs, and so on. A lot of this violence happened on the trains people were using to try to get to their new homes by the deadline; Nisha’s family is on one of these and she is traveling with her father, little brother and her grandmother. 

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If you enjoy reading historical fiction about times and places far from here, you might also like: I Must Betray You, by Ruta Sepetys, A Night Divided, by Jennifer Nielsen, I Lived on Butterfly Hill, by Marjorie Agosín, or Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi.

 

TAGS: historical fiction, India, partition, Pakistan, colonialism, Muslims, Hindus, religion, prejudice, violence, war, epistolary stories, refugees, families, death, forced migration, emigration