cover image Little Flower

Little Flower

Ted Oswald. Dispatch Publishing, $9.99 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-9886005-5-3

In Oswald’s rollicking novel, set in Delhi, an elderly nun teams up with a prostitute to find the killer of a boy they both loved, albeit in very different ways. Meeta Chandralekha is escaping from her brothel with her client and true love, Ram Kumar, when Ram gets into a fight at the train station with an unknown man and is thrown under a train and killed. Sister Shanti, of India’s Missionaries of Charity, who has known the troubled Ram since he was a small boy, decides to investigate after she learns of his death in the newspaper. When she meets Meeta, they reluctantly partner to find Ram’s killer. What follows is a dizzying few days spent on the teeming streets of Delhi, where Shanti and Meeta collide with vicious thugs, drug dealers, and noble street kids, while following a trail that leads to a slightly unhinged Bollywood actress who holds a shocking secret. The story is told in a letter written to Pope Francis, requesting Shanti’s canonization, by Sister Immaculata, whose gentle, wry humor adds levity to this story about a terrible crime and the blossoming of an unlikely partnership. Oswald’s novel is a unique, lovely take on faith, understanding, forgiveness, and love. [em](BookLife) [/em]