By Dawn McNutt
Special to THE DAILY

Family. That one word can inspire unprovoked outbursts in even the sanest person. Loyalty. A word whose meaning varies according to the individual.

Tradition. Which is better, the old ways of your family or the modern ways of our society?

Do you forsake everything you have been taught in your childhood to embrace something radical and unknown in a new country?

These are perplexing questions for young Karsan Dargawalla, who is destined to follow in his father’s footsteps as avatar of a 13th century Sufi shrine in rural India. The problem is, he has no desire to take the path that is expected of him. He dreams of a new life, far away from his father and his younger brother, who, as the novel progresses, may or may not be a terrorist.

It is the 1960s and Karsan is a young boy full of curiosity and stubbornness who desperately wants to find his own place in the world.

In order to escape his destiny, Karsan accepts a scholarship to Harvard against his father’s wishes and leaves India for more than 30 years. In 2002, his father’s death and a special quest bring him back to his homeland. By this time, Karsan has married, had a son and teaches at a college in British Columbia. By all appearances, he is an immigrant success story. He’s achieved the new life he desired and secured a well-paying job with a beautiful wife and child. Yet there is a growing discontent Karsan tries desperately to conceal.

Turning point

There is a tragedy. It affects him more then he ever could have imagined. Little by little he finds himself reverting to the old Indian ways. His father’s ways, to be exact. He begins to spend hours pondering karma and his lost heritage. It is here that the novel takes a darker turn — one the reader is unprepared for. There are a number of surprising revelations that illustrate just how complex a character Karsan truly is.

By the novel’s end, you will be completely spellbound. This is a beautifully written story that will captivate even the most fastidious reader who, in this day and age of media saturation of the Middle East, assumes he has nothing original to learn about religious fundamentalism and its effect on a country and its innocent bystanders.

Of equal importance is the novel’s exploration of the meaning of family and what it means to be a member of one. At what point do you break away from something that keeps calling you back long after its dissipation? You may not find the answer, but you’ll enjoy the journey throughout the pages of this exquisite novel.

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