Meera has been engaged to a boy from a neighboring town since she was a baby. The day before their wedding, the boy dies, and the other family expects Meera to follow their fringe religious beliefs and sacrifice herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Instead, Meera runs away and becomes a servant for an official in the British East India Company. There, Meera learns how to stand up for herself, and how to stand up for her country. At times hard to read, but a good story about a time period we don’t hear about often (1857 India.)