Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan

Her proper English upbringing and her sympathies for the Indian people. The daughter of a British Civil Service commissioner in 1920s India, 17-year-old Rosalind is torn between (author’s note, text of Gandhi’s letter of 1920, glossary) (Historical fiction. Whelan conveys the atmosphere of a critical period in India’s history from the sympathetic, first-person perspective of an egalitarian heroine who acts on her principles.Īn entertaining, if fanciful look at colonial India in transition. Though at first approaching India’s struggle from a “White Man’s Burden” perspective, Rosalind learns not to apply English values to India and its cultures. Whether saving an Indian girl from an arranged marriage or teaching Indian boys, Rosalind’s loyalties lie with her adopted country. Months later, in London, Rosalind’s chance encounter with King George V also affects Gandhi’s cause. When Rosalind’s father is invited to festivities surrounding the Prince of Wales’ visit to Calcutta, Max coaxes her to deliver an important letter from Gandhi to the prince. Now they sympathize with his nonviolent strikes disrupting the country. Two years before, Rosalind and her friend Max barely avoided arrest for publically supporting Gandhi’s movement to free India. Growing up in colonial India, Rosalind isn’t “what a well-bred English girl should be,” to the distress of her very British father. In this sequel to Small Acts of Amazing Courage (2011), heroine Rosalind dances with the Prince of Wales during his 1921 visit to India and does her bit for Gandhi’s independence movement. Rosalind desperately wants to do what is right, but will she have the courage to-and what will be the consequence? When her father’s military position provides Rosalind the opportunity to meet the Prince of Wales, she has the chance to tell him about the injustice she witnesses in the streets of India. The two worlds are colliding, and despite what Rosalind has been raised to think, she begins to resent the heavy hand of British rule.

The world where followers of Gandhi surround her, and the streets are full of poverty and the whispers of independence. And then there is the world of her homeland-or the land that feels like home, anyway. There is the world of her heritage-English to the core, with a strict father who is a major in the British Indian Army, a muted mother, and a tutor to educate her within the walls of the luxurious estate her family occupies. Rosalind inhabits two worlds in 1920s India.

Rosalind is caught between two worlds as Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution takes hold in this standalone companion to Small Acts of Amazing Courage.

Small Acts of Amazing Courage by Gloria Whelan