A novel based on a true story
Mahala was born a maverick.
At thirteen she refused the husband four parents had chosen for her. At twenty-one she left the island for New York with a suitcase and no permission. Based on the true life of the author’s grandmother.
Now on Audible
Mahala is now an audiobook
The novel readers can’t put down is now the one you can’t stop listening to. The narrated edition is live on Audible, alongside the hardcover and Kindle.
The book
Two mothers, one daughter, and where women get their nerve.
St. Vincent, British West Indies, 1900. Adopted by her mother’s best friend and raised next door to her biological siblings, Mahala grows up inside two families of Indian descent, in a colonial society with a plan already written for her: leave school, marry well, run a household.
She refuses it. What she builds instead, on a seamstress’s wages in New York’s garment district, is a life of her own choosing, and a reckoning, years later, with the mother who gave her away.
“We can’t control what the neighbors think, but we can control our own destiny. I’m not asking for permission.”
Mahala
Why readers love it
A book that starts a conversation
An emotional engine
A child given away by agreement between two families, and the reckoning that comes years later. It is why mothers and daughters keep reading it together.
Her grandmother’s life
Mahala refused an arranged marriage at thirteen and, so the family story goes, spat in her suitor’s eye. In 2024 Carol found the family’s ship manifest in the National Archives.
Made for book clubs
Forty-five short chapters and one propulsive life. A novel nobody puts down, and the reason book clubs keep choosing it.
Meet Carol in person
Upcoming events
Carol is signing across Connecticut this season. Come say hello.
Barnes & Noble, Westfarms Mall
The Booksmith Shoppe
For book clubs
Make Mahala your next book club read
A short, propulsive novel with a true story at its heart and a heroine worth arguing about. Carol loves dropping in on book clubs by video, and there is a free discussion guide to get the conversation started.
The newsletter
Get the stories that didn’t fit in the book
The real history behind Mahala: the ship manifests, the photographs, the recipes, and the women whose nerve Carol inherited.