The Wedding Drums
Marilyn Rodwell
Amina Banderjee is twelve, and dreams of becoming a teacher. In early 20C Trinidad, most girls her age are working in the sugar cane fields or already married. As typhoid fever grips the village, and superstition brings fear, her parents arrange a marriage for her. However, she and her friend Sumati, make a pact with each other to escape their arranged marriages.
But everything begins to go wrong.
Amina is devastated with events and while she seeks answers from religion, seventeen year old Rajnath uncovers a criminal operation involving exploitation. He and Amina become dangerously embroiled. As rumour, tragedy and the supernatural, take over the village, violence and crime seep into the marriage contracts, and into the beat of the wedding drums and the peaceful rural life – that will never quite be the same again.
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About the Author
Marilyn Rodwell was born in Trinidad and is fourth generation East Indian. Her first job was at age seventeen, teaching Maths, Health Science and Art at a private secondary school, followed by Government primary schools. She comes from a family of teachers and head teachers, and did Bible study every day. As a teenager, her hobbies included playing the violin and painting. She arrived in the UK at the age of nineteen, and after a family holiday, began student nurse training in Swansea, where there was much curiosity about her heritage and Trinidad.
After having a family, she returned to education at Coventry University studying Business Studies, after which, she launched a design, manufacturing and retail company. Later she lectured in Marketing and Business, and following the birth of her third child, she decided to start writing fiction.
She lives in the Warwickshire countryside with her husband and spends her time doing church related activities, cooking and writing. The Wedding Drums is her first novel, and the chapter illustrations are from oil paintings which she did at the age of thirteen.
