Small Acts of Amazing Courage
While her British Army major father has been away in WWI, 15-year-old Rosalind has enjoyed freedom in her southeast Indian town, roaming the bazaar with her Indian friends rather than chatting with other Brits at the local club. Then her father returns, and she chafes against his strict colonial views. After she is caught listening to Gandhi at a rally, Rosalind's furious father ships her off to her English aunts, where her free-thinking spirit once again shakes up the status quo. The historical and cultural details occasionally veer into docunovel territory, but Whelan balances the facts with distinctive, sometimes comical characterizations and vibrant, original sensory descriptions, whether Rosalind is describing an aunt's suit as "the color of burnt bacon" or the feeling, as ashes drift from the funeral pyres, that "the dead had become part of me." Set during a pivotal moment in Indian history, Whelan's vivid, episodic story explores the tension between doing what's right, rather than what's expected, and the infinite complexities of colonialism: "Though I have never been there, home, of course, is England." Grades 6-9. --Gillian Engberg