Shiva's Fire

This book takes place in India around the 1980's. It's a story of a girl born during a terrible calamity in her village and her being blamed for what goes wrong by the villagers. The girl is Parvati and her main interest in life is dancing.

However, she also seems to have almost supernatural abilities, being able to get along with animals to an uncanny degree and able to see a statue dancing.

As she grows up she and her mother face more and more discrimination, not only from the villagers but from their own relatives. This changes, though, when a guru who runs a dance studio, basically, shows up and ends up inviting Parvati to study at his studio.

It's a great honor, and she Parvati is also able to earn money and send it to her parents to help them rebuild their lives after the devastation that happened during the storm when Parvati was born. Parvati continues to have problems being accepted, though, this time because most of the other girls are jealous of her abilities.

She does have one friend, though, but the friend falls in love with an outlaw and ends up getting abducted by him. Parvati, meanwhile, is chosen to dance before a noted official of her village, and the rest of the story deals with that and with her relationship with the official's son who doesn't want to become the ruler of the city, even if the position is more titular than real.

The book is really, really good, a mix of reality and spiritual magic. Absolutely worth getting to read.

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