New York: Harcourt, Inc., (2008) dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first novel, inspired by her grandmother's stories, "Spanning the lifetime of one woman (18961962), [this] brings us intimately into a Brahmin household . . . Married at ten, widowed at eighteen, left with two children, Sivakami must wear widows whites, shave her head, and touch no one from dawn to dusk. She is not allowed to remarry, and in the next sixty years sheventures outside her family compound only three times. She is extremely orthodox in her behavior except for one defiant act: She moves back to her dead husbands house and village to raise her children." Frontispiece and illustrated half title page. 619 pp. ISBN: 978-0151015337.