First Promise; by Ashapurna Debi.

This is the first part of a trilogy, about three generations of women at various stages of liberty of personhood.

This one is about the first generation well taught with education and values given by her father. She is married and has children of her own and they include a daughter, a piece of her own heart - she wishes to educate her as she was, give her all she can.

But this was well over a century ago and the families had different ideas often, and laws were archaic. And to make matters worse, child marriages were not only prevalent they had been the rule since Islamic rule over most of the nation made it extremely risky to have a grown up daughter, or transport a young bride to the bridegroom's home. It had been safer for a few centuries to marry off young girls, before they were anywhere near puberty. The new rule by British had not changed that.

Satyavatie's daughter, Suvarnalataa, was five, and Satyavatie had already made it clear she would not tolerate any talk of the child being married off until she was grown up and well educated, as she herself had been.

But the mother-in-law tricked her - when the child was on a holiday visiting the grandparents she was married off before the mother could arrive and prevent it. The child was small and it was not abnormal socially, so the trauma for her began only when she was then dispatched off with the new relatives to her own in-laws home, and separated from her own mother - who arrived too late to stop the wedding but early enough to see her daughter married - by force, and had to live with them and take the lifelong taunts from them about her mother and her strange behaviour.

The daughter, Suvarnalata, is the next volume in the series, in many ways the one who battled more and with courage and strength she had inherited from her own mother - even though she had so little a time with her and no education to speak of. She carried the mother's dream forth, with resolve, fighting not only her own mother-in-law and the rest of society, but even her own sons, who were on the side of social norms about marrying off the youngest - the third woman in the series.

It is really hard to put a value on the series, practically a chronicle of generations of women, though the pattern was not same for every family where India is concerned - it never is, in India.

Fortunately. Because that is what makes progress and evolution not only possible but easier, with no central authority conducting inquisition.