Monsoon Summer, by Mitali Perkins
Fifteen year old Jazzmine Gardner is not looking forward to spending the summer in India. She knows that it is important to her mother to go back to the orphanage where she was left as an infant. She wants to give something back to the sisters by starting a medical clinic. Yet the last thing Jazz wants is to get involved with another of her mother’s charity projects. She would much rather spend her summer running her postcard business with her business partner and best friend, Steve. By the end of the summer she would have enough money to buy a car. But her summer in India turns out to be a life changing experience. Reluctantly, she becomes friends with Danika, another fifteen year old, who her parents have hired to cook Indian cuisine for the family. Danika is grappling with a life changing decision. Does she abandon her dreams in favor of an arranged marriage with a much older man? Each girl learns from the other some of life’s most important lessons.
