Girls Burn Brighter: A Novel

"Shobha Rao’s first novel, Girls Burn Brighter, details poverty in an Indian village to such an extreme that if you read only those details, you might blanch and move on – but Rao weaves them into the story of two young women, Poornima and Savitha, so elegantly that they become an essential part of the story’s cloth. Pardon the fabric metaphors used for a book about indigent sari weavers; once you’ve become involved in the characters’ efforts to live better lives, you may think the same way. An illuminating, compelling look at global trafficking."