Waiting and Wanting to Read on Wednesday: Boys Without Names

Robbie over at Boy With Books started this meme, and it fits my Wednesday needs better. Each week we share a book in our TBR pile that we just haven't gotten to yet, but we really want to read it or a book that's already out that we really look forward to reading.  This week it's also a book on my wish list because I don't own it  - yet!

Boys Without Names

by Kashmira Sheth

This is not a book I've seen all over the blogosphere.  I've seen it one, maybe two places, but it sounds amazing.  Read the summary for yourself!

From Goodreads:

For eleven-year-old Gopal and his family, life in their rural Indian village is over: We stay, we starve, his baba has warned. So they must flee to the big city of Mumbai in hopes of finding work and a brighter future. Gopal is eager to help support his struggling family until school starts, so when a stranger approaches him with the promise of a factory job, he jumps at the offer.

But Gopal has been deceived. There is no factory but, instead, a small, stuffy sweatshop, where he and five other boys are forced to make beaded frames for no money and little food. The boys are forbidden to talk or even to call one another by their real names. In this atmosphere of distrust and isolation, locked in a rundown building in an unknown part of the city, Gopal despairs of ever seeing his family again.


Then, late one night when Gopal decides to share kahanis, or stories, he realizes that storytelling might be the boys' key to holding on to their sense of self and their hope for any kind of future. If he can make them feel more like brothers than enemies, their lives will be more bearable in the shop—and they might even find a way to escape.