In Jasbinder Bilan's absorbing debut, Asha and the Spirit Bird, 11-year-old Hindu Asha and her 12-year-old Sikh friend, Jeevan, venture on a long, arduous trek.
Anchored in realism and enriched by Asha's belief that her dead nanijee (grandmother) is looking after her in the form of a lamagaia (a bearded vulture), Asha's first-person account describes a harrowing mission: she must find her father in northern India in hopes he'll pay off a loan her mother took out on their farm. Asha knows her father's address because he used to write her letters--but those stopped arriving in the spring, and it's now fall. Asha and best friend Jeevan travel by cart, train, foot and horse; they struggle through illness and storms. They visit the temple at the origin of the Ganges River to ask for blessings and endure the horrors of being temporarily imprisoned as child laborers, a grim reminder of the perils still present in the contemporary world. The two often spar about Asha's belief in reincarnation and things that cannot be seen, while Jeevan believes in what he can observe. Jeevan, however, cannot always find rational explanations for all that happens to the two in their travels.
Asha's determined nature and Jeevan's growing trust in her strengths (realistic and magical) provide young readers with both a growing relationship and a stirring quest chronicle. The mixture of authentic slices of Indian life and the mystical elements of Nanijee's influence blend together to form an exhilarating narrative that carries readers through the Himalayan landscape. --Melinda Greenblatt, freelance book reviewer