Myth and Punishment by Anoop Chandola

Twelve-year-old, US born, East Indian Adina is searching for a lost family jewel. Her nani, maternal grandmother, claims to have offered the jewel to one of the Hindu gods in return for a grandchild, resulting in Adina’s birth. The family jewels are an Indian girl’s birthright, and should have come to Adina, but her mother secretly sold off the jewels, in defiance of Hindu tradition, after she divorced Adina’s father when Adina was two. So the lost “crown” jewel is the only one left…if Adina can only find it.

Her quest for this piece of jewelry takes her on a virtual trip through Hindu cosmology and mythology and Indian history. She uses her laptop to find images of a given god, goddess, or historical figure then mediates on that image while remembering all she knows about the being, thanks to her paternal grandparents’ tutelage in her Indian heritage. Adina’s meditations are extraordinary, however, in that the figure comes alive, and she can interact with that being—sometimes at her own peril…