I've just finished reading Sister of My Heart, also by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The story is set mostly in Calcutta in the 1980s and tells of two cousins who are brought up as sisters in a fatherless household run by three women. The plotting is superb, with a dark family secret at the crux of the events of the novel.

While times are beginning to change in India, the old customs for women still prevail. The reader can get a good picture of the lives of women during this period as well as an insight into arranged marriages and the traditional Hindu wedding ceremonies, along with the roles of new wives in the households of their mothers-in-law.

I really enjoyed this novel. There are crying parts toward the end, which I like in a novel for some reason or another, but the final message is one of a mixed hope for the future.