Mariam Sharma Hits The Road (YA fiction)

     When Mariam, narrator of Sheba Karim's Mariam Sharma Hits The Road, gets a phone call from her best friend, Ghaz, a New York University student, she gets some shocking news. Ghaz hadn't read a modeling contract carefully enough. A picture of her in basically underwear in a very sexualized pose is larger than life on a billboard in Times Square. 

     Now this would come as a shock to just about any mom. If this was one of my kids at that age I'd have had serious concerns about how this would impact their future. But Ghaz is in a more difficult parental situation. Her desi Muslim parents shut her in her room without access to her laptop or phone. They are shamed by how she has disgraced their family in their conservative religious community. They want her to finish college in Pakistan and not come back to America until she's properly married. 

     Umar, the third member of the besties trio, comes up with a rescue plan: a kidnapping and a cross country road trip to New Orleans. 

     Ghaz is not the only member of the trio who has family issues. Mariam's father totally abandoned her family when she was a toddler, never to be heard from again. She wonders if this is why she ghosted a really decent boyfriend when they got serious. Is she too much like her missing parent? Umar is gay. His father is virulently homophobic. 

     "It was weird, to think in the far reaches of the universe, two suns drew closer and closer in a cosmic dance of love, while down here some people tried to get as far away from one another as possible. My father from us, me from Doug, Ghaz from her parents. Then there was Umar, sometimes running away from his sexuality, sometimes running to it. And now me, chasing after my father. All three of us in flux, our friendship serving as an emotional anchor."

     Despite spats the three draw even closer as the miles go by. Their colorful ventures into novel situations such as drag shows and honky tonks and hard won insights into their family situations make Mariam Sharma Hits The Road a highly engaging read.

On a purrrsonal note, the library children's garden and the community garden are coming along super. A lot of good veggies are being b

planted. Even my little garden is looking pretty. 

A great big shout out goes out to all our gardeners. 

Jules Hathaway 

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