A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart by Nishant Batsha - 3 stars

[Joy D]

A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart by Nishant Batsha - 3* - My Review

Based on a true story, this book focuses on a Bengali revolutionary and an American graduate student who meet in San Francisco in 1917. Cora Trent is a strong-willed young woman attending Stanford. She is an early feminist who resents the limitations placed on women. Indra Mukherjee is involved in the Indian Independence movement. He has arrived in the US to meet a German diplomat who is said to have connections to an arms cache. They meet at a protest and develop an almost instant attraction. This is a period when the US was about to enter the Great War, and ties to Germany are being investigated. The couple must flee to avoid arrest. Themes include love, idealism, different types of freedoms, and loyalty. It is well-written, and I enjoyed learning about this couple’s story (and looked up the real people afterward) but it seemed to cover lots of content without much depth. I liked it enough to read another book by this author.