A Guardian And A Thief by Megha Majumdar

 

Kolkata, India, is in crisis.  The neverending heat means that crops have failed.  People can barely stand to be outdoors and the markets are empty pretty much anyway.  Ma's family has done better than others.  She runs a nonprofit agency that distributes food and has managed to bring enough home to insure that her father and daughter can eat.  

Things should improve though.  Ma's husband has been in the United States for six months, working as a scientist.  He has finally managed to get visas for the three of them and they are to leave in a week.  

Boomba has no such luck.  He came to the city to find work to send money back to his family whose house has been destroyed and who have nothing.  He wants to bring them to the city but doesn't have anywhere for them to stay.  He has been staying at the refugee center Ma runs and he saw her stealing food.  Now he goes to her house during the night, gets in, and steals food and her purse which holds the passports and visas. 

It is now a fight to see which family will survive.  Ma finds Boomba but he has blackmail power over her.  Can she manage to get her family to the airport to fly out?  Can Boomba bring his family to the city and take over Ma's house when she leaves?

Megha Majumdar is an Indian novelist who now lives in the United States where she teaches at Hunter College.  This is her second novel and it is a finalist for the National Book Award and has been named a Notable Book by multiple media outlets.  The relationship between Ma and her family and Boomba and his family illustrate the love and protectiveness one has for loved ones.  As it becomes a fight for suvival, the reader sees how both main characters are willing to do things they never thought they would be capable of, and how they justify the evil they are willing to perpetrate.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.