Halfway Up the Mountain: The Life and Letters of the Rev & Mrs Clifford V. Cook China Missionaries 1925-52

Kiran Khalap’s first novel is a poetic work, in which prayer, spirituality and reality are interwoven. A mountain girl, Maya, fights her fate in a traditional Indian family. She makes steamed pancakes with turmeric leaf fragrance and skips school. Her fate is tied to Ravindra in an arranged marriage that falls apart when Maya meets the poet, Krishnarao, and is forced to spend the night in his house by a torrential storm. Ravindra refuses to believe that their son Sharan is his own, and he leaves her. The young girl is undone by the men closest to her, abandoned in an Indian society that places no value on a woman on her own. A tale of snakebites, separation and sadness.