It's hard to say why this book gripped me so much. Ms. Shepard has gone to India on a research grant, to make a documentary about the Bene Israel settlement on the coast near Mumbai. The Bene Israel is a community of Jews who were shipwrecked on the coast two thousand years ago; they have lived until recently in isolation from the rest of the Jewish world but but still practicing what they could remember of their religion.
That's the focus of Ms. Shepard's research grant, but you quickly learn she's also hankering after a different story--the story of her grandmother. Her grandmother was a Jewish woman who became the third wife of a Muslim man, taking on his religion and raising her children in it, but never truly forsaking her own. She was a highly educated woman, a nurse--why did she choose to give that up and become a second-class citizen? Why did she quit her own work to take care of her husband's properties and live in his house as the 'favored wife'? What were her thoughts--her daily experiences--her deepest feelings?
Maybe the author wasn't able to answer all these questions, but she made a great try. And answered a few of her own existential questions at the same time. Not perfect but very interesting.
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