The novel
Mahala
Women’s fiction · Family saga · Based on a true story
Mahala was born a maverick. At thirteen she refused the husband four parents had chosen. At twenty-one she left the island for New York with a suitcase and no permission.
The story
Two mothers, one daughter, and where women get their nerve
Mahala was born a maverick.
Adopted by her mother’s best friend and raised next door to her biological siblings, she grows up inside two families of Indian descent, in a colonial Caribbean society with a plan for her already written: leave school, marry well, run a household, arrange her own daughters’ weddings one day.
She is thirteen when four parents choose her husband. She refuses him, publicly and disastrously, in a way her family’s reputation will not quickly recover from.
At twenty-one she leaves St. Vincent for New York with a suitcase and no one’s permission, and finds work at a sewing machine in the garment district. What she builds there, on a seamstress’s wages and her own nerve, is a life of her own choosing, and a reckoning, years later, with the mother who gave her away.
Based on the true life of the author’s grandmother, Mahala is a family saga about two mothers, one daughter, and where women get their nerve.
Inside the story
- She was thirteen when they chose her husband. She said no.
- Four parents. One plan for her life. She had her own.
- She was a feminist before feminists existed.
- Lucknow to St. Vincent under indenture. St. Vincent to New York with a suitcase.
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Praise for Mahala
What readers are saying
“A luminous and deeply affecting portrait of a woman whose spirit cannot be contained.”
Goodreads reviewer
“A beautifully written novel that stayed with me long after I turned the last page.”
Goodreads reviewer
“Mahala is someone I believe readers should meet.”
Goodreads reviewer
Now on Audible
The Mahala audiobook
Experience Mahala in a whole new way. The narrated edition is live on Audible now, and joins the hardcover and Kindle wherever the book is already sold.
Before you read
Content Note
Mahala is suitable for adult and older-teen readers and for library and book-club programming. It opens on recurrent miscarriage and infertility grief, and its heart is a child given away by agreement between two families. There is no on-page sexual content, no graphic violence, and no profanity of note.