For My Sister

Winner of the 2022 International Impact Book Award for Women's Fiction

Amla and Asya are sixteen-year-old twins living with their family in a small village outside of Mumbai. While they look alike, they are very different. Asya is known for her quiet grace and understanding, whereas Amla questions authority and breaks rules.

Their lives change overnight when their mother becomes ill with cancer and their father succumbs to the massive financial strain of her care in Mumbai and eventually abandons his children. To the twins' dismay, their grandparents arrange their marriages to older men. When they form a plan and run away to join their mother in the hope for a new life, the girls discover that the world is not what they thought.

After trusting the wrong people, a long train ride brings them to the dark streets of India's largest red light district where they are sold to a ruthless woman. Their only security is each other . . . until they are separated. Though they each discover ways to cope through poetry, art, and romance, they long for the other half of themselves. Will their lives ever intertwine again?

Puja Shah is a visionary poet who shares her voice through written and spoken word, guided meditations, and teaching. Born in Queens, New York, to immigrant parents, she defied teachers who questioned her English skills by winning countless poetry and short story awards in her youth. As an avid reader, she spent her teen years exploring New York City for poetry slams and book readings. The blend of East and West has always fascinated her, so she holds a graduate degree in dental medicine from Tufts University as well as over a dozen trainings in various forms of yoga, meditation, and ancient wisdom. For My Sister is her first novel.www.formysisterbook.com