A Love Story for My Sister

1857: Eighteen-year-old Margaret Wheeler, daughter of General Wheeler, is kidnapped during the uprising. 1997: Eighteen-year-old Delhi schoolgirl Tara Fernandez is kidnapped and murdered. Two crimes of passion separated by 140 years, but bound by strange similarities. In 2013, Tara’s little sister, Pia, is a young aspiring novelist, investigating the curious story of Margaret, one of the first known ‘victims’ of Stockholm Syndrome. She married the soldier who had kidnapped her during the 1857 massacres, and went on to live, seemingly happily, as a Muslim. When Pia stumbles upon Margaret’s private journal and letters, she finally begins to understand how it might have been possible for her to fall in love with her captor. But the more compelling question before Pia is whether her sister might have been similarly in love. Why else did she not return home when she clearly had the chance? But, if she had been in love, why was she eventually killed? Moving gracefully between the gruelling summer of 1850s’ Kanpur and the leaden grey winter of modern-day Delhi, Jaishree Misra weaves an intriguing tale of danger and violence and the human capacity for hope.