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Alive: A story of generational trauma and hope
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ISBN13: 9798181600645
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 14 2026
Pages: 442
Weight: 1.17
Height: 1.10 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 14 2026
Pages: 442
Weight: 1.17
Height: 1.10 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Three women. Three generations. One bloodline and a single, unbreakable refusal to disappear.
In 1890s Kerala, a gifted young woman's world is shattered in a single afternoon by the casual cruelty of empire. Cast out by the community that should have protected her, she boards a ship bound for a country she has never seen, carrying nothing but her child and a quiet, ferocious will to survive. What she cannot know is that the wound she carries will travel forward through her daughter, born into the brutal machinery of plantation labour and apartheid South Africa, and through her great-granddaughter, raised in poverty and fighting battles of her own a century later. Three women. Three continents. One question that haunts them across more than a hundred years: can a chain forged by violence and loss ever truly be broken, and what will it cost the woman who tries?
In 1890s Kerala, a gifted young woman's world is shattered in a single afternoon by the casual cruelty of empire. Cast out by the community that should have protected her, she boards a ship bound for a country she has never seen, carrying nothing but her child and a quiet, ferocious will to survive. What she cannot know is that the wound she carries will travel forward through her daughter, born into the brutal machinery of plantation labour and apartheid South Africa, and through her great-granddaughter, raised in poverty and fighting battles of her own a century later. Three women. Three continents. One question that haunts them across more than a hundred years: can a chain forged by violence and loss ever truly be broken, and what will it cost the woman who tries?
Spanning Kerala, colonial Natal, and contemporary Johannesburg, Alive is a sweeping, deeply moving debut about what women inherit, not only trauma and grief, but tenderness, resilience, and the stubborn, luminous refusal to stop. Some inheritances are a burden. Some are a gift. This is the story of a woman who finally learned the difference.
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