by M T Khan (Author)
Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many things--to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it's not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says there's buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family's life forever. Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas--a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother's cautionary tales. Yet they aren't nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where she's given everything she could ever imagine and more.
But there's a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owner's son and is banished to the working quarters, she realizes she isn't the only human who's ended up in the hotel's clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there, too, and if Nura can't find a way to help them all escape, they'll be bound to work for the hotel forever. Set in a rural industrial town in Pakistan and full of hope, heart, and humor, Nura and the Immortal Palace is inspired by M.T. Khan's own Pakistani Muslim heritage.
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In fictional Meerabagh, Pakistan, clever, ambitious Nura and her friend Faisal, often teased for his stutter, mine mica scraps, reaching crevices too deep in the earth for adults to access. Though her widowed mother dreams of sending her to school, Nura concentrates her wishes on more immediate things, such as the sweets she can buy with her wages. Finally forbidden from mining, Nura determines to unearth the legendary and valuable Demon's Tongue mica stone on her final day. When she digs too deep, however, and the earth collapses over Faisal, Nura delves even farther to save him, landing in the realm of the jinn, and at the Sijj Palace, an opulent jinn hotel. There she finds Faisal, and the duo face trickery from the jinn, who offer untold luxuries and attempt to maneuver human children into laboring for the hotel. Meticulous plotting and layered lore elevate Khan's debut, while Nura and Faisal's friendship grounds the high-stakes story about burgeoning labor consciousness. An author's note contextualizes the importance of education as well as cycles of exploitation and forced child labor. Ages 8-12. Agent: Melanie Castillo, Root Literary. (July)
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