The Freedom Seeker

Twelve-year-old Simi Singh has grown up with loving parents and grandparents in her north Indian town. Her life is marked by birthdays, harvest festivals, school exams, hockey competitions, and Diwali and Id celebrations. Until now, her only worries have been winning the next hockey championship, getting better grades than her best friend Ravi, and of course--avoiding the comments that her class nemesis, Ashok, makes about her being “a Paki.”

But one night, as a rock crashes through the window of her family’s Id celebration, as her family reads the note wrapped around it and the silence brings their celebration to a halt, Simi realizes that something very bad is happening. And life will never be the same.

A vigilante group against inter-faith marriage is targeting her Hindu Sikh father and Muslim mother. And in the face of mounting violence, they must choose whether to separate or leave India. When her father decides to flee the country, Simi’s once peaceful world shatters into a million pieces. In a terrible twist of fate, by the time Simi’s father applies for family reunification, the US policy on political asylum has become stricter. His petition is rejected. Desperate to escape the threats at home, Simi’s mother, pays a smuggler to sneak them into the US. But when they are separated while crossing the Arizona desert—each told that the other is dead—Simi must form friendships and navigate the darkness of her current situation to find her mother who she knows must be alive...