Women's Speaker Series: Sujata Massey, author of The Widows of Malabar Hill
Fee: $30/$25 members - includes an autographed copy of The Widows of Malabar Hill, refreshments from MKE Localicious, and admission to the sculpture garden. Register by phone at 414-446-8794.
Margy Stratton, founder and executive producer of Milwaukee Reads produces this series of events featuring writers of particular interest to women.
Lynden Sculpture Garden's Women's Speaker Series and Boswell Books welcome Sujata Massey, author of The Widows of Malabar Hill, to the Lynden Sculpture Garden, Saturday, January 13, 2-4 pm.
About The Widows of Malabar Hill
Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with an Oxford, legal education, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women’s legal rights.
Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X—meaning she probably couldn’t even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah—in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger.
Inspired in part by a real woman who made history by becoming India’s first female lawyer, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp and promising new sleuth, Perveen Mistry.
About the Author
Sujata Massey is the author of thirteen novels, two novellas, and numerous short stories. Her work is published in seventeen countries. Her novels have won the Agatha and Macavity awards and been finalists for the Edgar, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark prizes. Sujata writes a modern mystery series set in Japan starring the young female amateur sleuth Rei Shimura, and suspense and mystery fiction set in late British colonial India featuring different heroines.
Sujata was born in England to parents from India and Germany, and was raised mostly in St. Paul, Minnesota, although her home for more than a quarter century has been Baltimore, Maryland. She holds a B.A. in the Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University and was a features reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper before becoming a full-time novelist. More information: http://sujatamassey.com/
