The Toss of a Lemon

A sweeping, luminous saga of love, loss, caste, and resilience in colonial India. When ten-year-old Sivakami is married to a much older astrologer, her fate is sealed by tradition. By eighteen, she is widowed--her head is shaved and, according to Brahmin custom, she cannot touch or be touched, even by her young children, from dawn to dusk. But Sivakami refuses to vanish into ritual seclusion. With fierce determination, she returns to her husband’s household to raise her two children, enlisting t