This is a wonderful and exciting magical-realist story set in contemporary India with a focus on the importance on friendship. Asha sets out secretly with her best friend Jeevan from their tiny village in the Punjab on a hair raising and dangerous adventure to find her beloved father who stopped writing and sending money to the family 4 months ago from his job in a far away city. Asha discovers along the way that she is being guided by her beloved dead Grandmother Nanijee, who has been reincarnated as a spirit bird, a lamagaia (vulture).
They must get home by Divali, when the money lenders her mother was forced to use, will return and take the family home. The narrative is rich with Hindu mythology and faith.