From Ash to Ashes

A tragedy in Mira Singh's life has left her devastated and mourning. No one in her family knows how to confront the tragedy that befalls them, and they place the blame on each other, and even on God. Mira's parents do not understand the struggles of their children. Having immigrated from India in 1984, the family have all faced discrimination because of their religious background and practices. Mira's brother has faced the worst discrimination, and traumatized, he is estranged from the family. Within this web of family tragedy and grief, forbidden love blooms in the hearts of the women in the story. Bittersweet romance, a heart-wrenching tale of love lost, and love attained tease the senses. The clash between old world sanctity and the new western world's temptations reveal the true test of character and strength in the family members. Each of them struggle not only to communicate with each other, but to understand each other's perspectives, or to relate to their different relationships with American culture and society. An exploration of assimilation and banishment, of the cost of difference and the value of family weave this powerful story together into a breathtaking novel of quiet beauty.

About the Author :
Krishma immigrated to the United States from India when she was five years old, and like Mira, the protagonist in her novel, grew up on Long Island and then attended NYU. She is a poet, writer, and public speaker. For a few years, she was the author of "Free Spirit," a monthly column in her hometown magazine, Brookville Living. She has an MS in Education, as well as an MS in Marketing. She has also worked as a high school social studies teacher for 11 years. She lives in New York with her husband and four children. She began writing From Ash to Ashes seventeen years ago, after the death of her first child. His loss was the inspiration for her book, and she has dedicated it to his memory. In addition to From Ash to Ashes, she is also writing a nonfiction book, titled Brown Girl's Guide, a collection of essays on womanhood and motherhood as seen through the eyes of a woman of color.

Review :
"A Punjabi girl and her family reconcile their Indian customs and Sikh faith with their new lives in late-20th-century America. Mira Singh is grieving a loss too shameful to talk about. Growing up in a mostly White suburb in Long Island after her family left Queens, she was teased for her hairy legs and Indian lunches, but she had memories of a happy childhood and her faith in Guru to anchor her. When her sister, Ritu, falls in love with a Muslim boy and is quickly married off to a fellow Sikh to avoid gossip, Mira starts to see flaws in the customs she never questioned before. Her brother Jazz was mercilessly bullied at school, and her brother Jeet felt the heavy weight of living up to his parents' expectations at all costs. Mira and her siblings each experiment with activities their parents forbid and struggle to understand against a backdrop of worries about community judgment. It's not until the Singhs suffer a terrible loss that they are forced to consider each other's perspectives. Chapters move forward and backward in time, slowly revealing the central mystery in a tantalizing way, ultimately flashing forward to 2018. The writing feels heavy-handed at times, but the book encourages readers to wrestle with questions of parental abuse, individual dreams, personal sacrifice, and religious faith as Mira and her siblings navigate a multitude of challenges. A complex depiction of a family in turmoil. " -Kirkus Reviews "Krishma Arora's debut novel is exceedingly gripping from page one. Prepare to be enthralled by the rollercoaster experiences of a female Sikh in America as she negotiates the cultural complexities of her amalgamated but still truncated immigrant persona. Through the forward and back movement of the narrative, the reader becomes embroiled in the lives of a closely-knit family whose ups and downs make for compellingly emotional reading. This is a brilliant account of varied South Asian rites of passage from naive adolescence to heartbreakingly enlightened adulthood." - Rochelle Almeida, D.A., Ph.D., author of The Year The World Was Mine: An Anglophile Hits A Half Century "Arora's writing is highly descriptive and evocative, with rich details about Indian culture and way of life. From a Sikh religious wedding to college romance, Arora has written a coming of age story, the difficult intersection of arriving and learning American ways, and the many complications of family secrets. I highly recommend this debut novel." - Cari Scribner, author of A Girl Like You and A Place Like This