Fidali's Way: A Novel - Hardcover

"Recent terror attacks in Mumbai have awakened worldwide awareness of the animosity between India and Pakistan. It's unfortunate that such a tragic event would seem to benefit a book chronicling that silent war. But then again, maybe it's helpful that a literate, insightful and suspenseful story brings a clearer understanding of a dirty little conflict, one with the potential to become very dangerous."-- Peter Mergendahl, Rocky Mountain News

Disillusioned with American life, Nick Sunder has spent the past several months backpacking through the Middle East and Southeast Asia, most recently in the company of a beautiful, French woman he met in India. When the woman is found brutally murdered in the tribal lands of Pakistan, Nick is soon arrested and tortured by the Pakistani police. Amazingly, he escapes their custody, and heads off on foot through the steep mountains of Kashmir, the highest warzone on earth. With the help of an eccentric Kashmiri smuggler-philosopher and Fidali, his mysterious companion, Nick reaches the idyllic mountain village of Gilkamosh in Indian-occupied Kashmir. There he meets Aysha, a defiant and beautiful doctor whose own life is disrupted when her teenage love, Kazim, returns to the village as a seasoned muhajideen in charge of a violent band of separatists. When Gilkomosh is struck by a horrific act of terrorism, Nick's search for meaning becomes more complicated and he finds himself immersed in Aysha's struggle to resist the competing forces threatening to tear the village apart. Fidali's Way is an ambitious literary novel of colliding cultures, love and sacrifice, the ruthlessness of fanatical religion and the redemptive power of pure faith.