Soma

Days after his eleventh birthday, Soma stands grimly before his new home, a remote boarding school in the rain-soaked jungles of Coorg. His ailing father has moved the family from America to his native India, a land that Soma knows little about. School is nothing but chaos. His classmates are scheming, his teachers are mustached and severe, and a terrifying snake-charming warden seems to lurk around every corner. Most troubling of all, a pretty classmate named Sitara appears eager to speak to him. Desperate, he turns to the school's enigmatic librarian-who offers him India's great epic, the Ramayana. To Soma's surprise, these ancient tales don't feel so ancient at all. They run beneath his new life like a current, glimmering through his friendships, fights, and heart-thumping conversations with Sitara. Slowly, unsteadily, he begins to find his place. But soon the black clouds of the monsoon season gather. When their storms threaten to wash away all that he's built, Soma must confront his fragile new footing in India and decide who he must become to defend it.