For fans of Pachinko and Half of a Yellow Sun , an intimate debut novel about immigration, marriage, and vengeance politics told through the eyes of four Bengali teenagers in two vastly different time periods. In 1970s Sylhet, eleven-year-old Sumaya is the daughter of a wealthy Bengali aristocrat who lives unaware of the Liberation War against West Pakistan and the cost of independence she will soon pay. In the same city, fifteen-year-old Murshed lives without hope for the future, knowing that his father’s religious and political stance has painted his family as razakar—traitors—a death sentence if West Pakistan loses the war. Then, one day, their paths cross and a single encounter upends both their lives forever. Forty years later, Sumaya’s third daughter, Hinna, and Murshed’s eldest son, Burhaan, lock eyes at a family gathering. The two, reunited flames, live vastly different lives: Hinna has grown up in America, far from the chaos of the war but stuck in an endless cycle of tradition. Burhaan has lived his entire life in Sylhet, attempting to start over despite the never-ending vengeance against razakar families. But drawn to each other as they are, they soon find out that plans for Hinna’s future are already in motion. Connected by the far reaches of tyranny and tradition, these families discover what’s found and lost—dreaming of a Bangladesh free from dictatorship and holding the silent hope of paradise. “Combines elements of romance fiction, immigrant memoir, coming-of-age tale, and political history; Samiha Hoque has constructed an intriguing novel of love and marriage, family, and tradition.” —Ellen Barker, author of Nothing North of Delmar Samiha Hoque is a Bangladeshi American environmentalist and author of the picture books A Country of Beautiful People and Brave Is the Tiger . She is a two time Climate Justice Fellow for the Center for Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health (CEEJH), and she holds a B.S. in the Earth and Environmental Sciences with an English minor. Her debut novel, Slums of Paradise , was selected as a She Writes Press STEP winner and explores the intertwining nature of immigration, marriage, and politics. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Samiha now lives with her extremely outdoorsy and romantic husband in Delaware.