Anubha Mehta is a Canadian writer, artist and educator who was born in India. Mehta earned a doctorate in Political Science. Her short stories and poems have been published in several Canadian magazines. Mehta currently lives in Mississauga, Ontario.
Fiction
Peacock in the Snow
Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2018.
e-book (Access restricted to members of the TMU community)
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
Born to privilege and wed to her high school sweetheart Veer, a free spirited Maya feels trapped in a conventional upper class family with patriarchal expectations in India. Claustrophobic within the dark walls of the mansion she lives in with Veer, Maya starts living precariously through the threads of her curiosity. This curiosity leads Maya to unearth a dark family secret, a brutal ancestral murder which begins to haunt her and also affect her new marriage.
To escape the malicious spirits lingering in the house, Maya and her family fly to a new land and discover the rough corners, hardship, and the bounty that this adopted country offers. As Maya tries to rebuild her life amidst adventure and the struggles of settling in a new country, her relationship with Veer is tested beyond its limits. Not knowing that the ghosts of their past have followed them, in a race against time, Maya is put to a final test. Armed with conviction and hope, Maya sets out to face the dark forces that lie await.
Peacock in the Snow is a one-of-a kind genre-bending thriller about the power of an eternal love, which survives through three generations of heartbreak, across two continents, and speaks to the tireless capacity of the human spirit to love, hope, strive, and succeed despite impossible obstacles.