The Kashmiri Shawl by Joanne Dobson
First and foremost, this book is a great read. Someone who cares not at all about the implications and the importance of the story being told would still love it just for the story.
This is a story about the oppression of women, racism, imperialism, and about individuals and parts of society making efforts to overcome these injustices. The story does not preach, it just tells. A love story, a woman's quest, the underground railroad, and ultimately, the Civil War and an rebellion in India. It's a grand story told on an individual level.
The writing is beautiful, while I read the book I felt like I was watching a movie on a big screen.
The author Joanne Dobson is a scholar, a professor and writer. And if you ask me, judging from the poems embedded in this new book as part of the story, she is a poet as well. She is an accomplished and award-winning mystery writer, whose latest book is Historical Fiction.
Don't let that genre scare you. I sometimes find that in historical fiction, the story gets in the way of the history or the history gets in way of the story. In this book, they flow together naturally and gracefully. The story is enhanced by time and place and the culture of the time is brought alive by the story. The book captures the essence of the places involved - New York City on the eve of the Civil War, India during the days of Christian missionaries and British rule, and Charleston during the last days of the slave trade -so that they are recognizable even as the places they are today.
This book is self-published and I truly believe that if it had the backing of some marketing and PR it could be a best seller. I don't know how widely it is available, but it is available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. I'll link to it at the bottom.
I'll start with the official description of the book that I copied from the author's website:
http://www.joannedobson.com/
THE KASHMIRI SHAWL
A nineteenth-century American widow embarks on a daring quest to find her dark-skinned child.
INDIA, 1857: Anna Wheeler Roundtree, missionary wife, flees her husband's pious tyranny, leaving the safety of the Protestant mission in which she's spent most of the past decade. Her timing is bad: the train carrying her to freedom steams into the midst of the brutal Indian Rebellion. She is, however, plucked from danger by Ashok Montgomery, a wealthy Anglo-Indian tea-planter. Together they escape the angry mobs and find the shelter of an isolated mountain cave. There, for the first time, Anna learns the true nature of love.
New York City, 1860: now a successful poet featured in national magazines, Anna Wheeler is astonished to learn that the daughter she bore upon her return was not stillborn, as she'd been told, but has been kidnapped. When Anna hears the baby described as dark-skinned, she realizes that Ashok, the man she'd left behind in the tumult of the rebellion, is the true father, not her blond-haired, fair-skinned missionary husband. In her racially inflamed nation on the verge of its own disastrous civil war, Anna throws respectability to the winds, learns to take risks, break rules, and trust strangers in a determined search for the little girl.
Then a deranged voice arises from her tormented past, making demands that compel her back to India. Anna must confront the evil that sent her running in the first place. Will her daring quest for her child, and for the love of her life, end in triumph or heartbreak?
It's obvious from the beginning that Anna is a little different. She is raised in upstate NY during the Second Great Awakening. Anna rejects the severe religion, refusing to believe she was born a sinner and deserving of eternal hell. At the age of twelve when the Reverend calls all to the altar who have accepted Christ's salvation, she remains in the pew as everyone else rushes forward, singing and screaming.
It isn't that Anna doesn't believe, she just doesn't feel the spirit enough that proclaiming her salvation would be authentic. She faces beatings at home and scorn from the community but she holds firm. Anna being authentic to herself and her struggle to maintain authenticity is, to me, the main theme of the book. She struggles with it at times. Worries about it; about appearances and about her ability to support herself (and her child someday), however she always remains true to herself in the end.
Even when she meets and falls in love with the Reverend Roundtree, the feelings are genuine, and her call to Jesus at the time is real as well, she is saved. However, those feelings are only temporary.
She is oppressed by her husband, who believes a wife's only duty is to serve her husband. As she serves him in the missionary in India, she comes to love the country and the people, while her husband still only sees them as heathens and potential followers of Jesus. She comes to realize that rather than pious, her husband is only ridged. He abuses her emotionally and physically, and she finally realizes that she must leave.
The pacing of the story is excellent. It luxuriates at times, draws suspense at others, and always presses on right when the reader is eager to find what happens next. It gradually picks up intensity, and I warn the reader now that when approaching the last 1/4 of the book, make sure not to have any important engagements in the morning.
At the same time as feeling she has to get away from her husband, Anna is homesick. It is normal for missionaries and their families to take a sabbatical every two years and they are in their fifth year without one. Also at this time there are whispers of rebellion, and the Roundtrees are warned that they might be safe staying at the mission.
Even then the Reverend Roundtree refuses to leave, so Anna decides to sneak away. She almost makes it, but her train is halted by rebels. She is led away by Ashok Montgomery, an acquaintance who happens to be on the same train.
And with Ashok begins the true love story.
She stays with Ashok for awhile, but feels she needs to go back to New York City. Along the way she discovers that she is with child. The child is delivered and she is told it is stillborn. Anna settles into a boarding house and writes inspirational poetry for magazines to make a living.
Until one day a when a woman shows up at her boarding house and tells her that her child survived childbirth. Then begins her quest for the child, and a whole new world opening up for Anna.
The story takes us through the slums of New York and into high society, and people there that are helpful to her and those that would thwart her. She travels to a slave auction in Charleston and back to India looking for her child.
This is a beautifully written book, both moving and thrilling.
Amazon Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/...
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/...