Evie and Maryam’s Family Tree

About this book

Evie and Maryam seem to have little in common. Evie is part of the popular crowd at school; the ones who live in big houses and have cool phones. But Maryam always feels a bit left out and lives in a council flat. 

When they are paired up for a class project investigating family backgrounds, some strange coincidences point to a historical connection between them.  

It seems that both their great-grandmothers were living in Delhi in the 1920s. It hardly seems likely that they knew one another as one was part of a British army family and the other was the daughter of a local dressmaker. But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. 

As the girls’ research brings them closer together, Evie is forced to re-evaluate her choice of friends and realises that throughout life we keep some friends, lose others and, hopefully, find new ones. 

This is a wonderfully original dual narrative story set both in the present day and in India in the years leading up to independence from the British. 

As an emerging friendship finds its parallel in the distant past, many similarities become obvious, such as the prejudice experienced by people with brown skin. Absorbing and insightful.