Library Loot ~ November 2-8

Wife of the Gods ~ by Kwei Quartey, 2009, fiction (Ghana)

Overview:  Introducing Detective Inspector Darko Dawson: dedicated family man, rebel in the office, ace in the field — and one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years.  Dawson has been ordered by his cantankerous boss to leave behind his loving wife and young son in Ghana’s capital city to lead a murder investigation:  In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman — a promising medical student — has been found dead under suspicious circumstances.  Dawson is fluent in Ketanu’s indigenous language, so he’s the right man for the job, but the local police are less than thrilled with an outsider’s interference.  For Dawson, this sleepy corner of Ghana is rife with emotional land mines:  an estranged relationship with the family he left behind twenty-five years earlier and the painful memory of his own mother’s inexplicable disappearance.  Armed with remarkable insight and a healthy dose of skepticism, Dawson soon finds his cosmopolitan sensibilities clashing with age-old customs, including a disturbing practice in which teenage girls are offered to fetish priests as trokosi, or Wives of the Gods.  Delving deeper into the student’s haunting death, Dawson will uncover long-buried secrets that, to his surprise, hit much too close to home.

The Sandalwood Tree ~ by Elle Newmark, 2011, fiction (India)

Overview:  In 1947, an American anthropologist named Martin Mitchell wins a Fulbright Fellowship to study in India.  He travels there with his wife, Evie, and his son, determined to start a new chapter in their lives.  Upon the family’s arrival, though, they are forced to stay in a small village due to violence surrounding Britain’s imminent departure from India.  It is there, hidden behind a brick wall in their colonial bungalow, that Evie discovers a packet of old letters that tell a strange and compelling story of love and war involving two young Englishwomen who lived in the very same house in 1857.  Drawn to their story, Evie embarks on a mission to uncover what the letters didn’t explain.  Her search leads her through the bazaars and temples of India as well as the dying society of the British Raj.  Along the way, a dark secret is exposed, and this new and disturbing knowledge creates a wedge between Evie and her husband.

Library Loot is a weekly meme co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.  If you would like to share a list of the loot you brought home from the library, Marg has the Mister Linky this week.