Of Customs and Excise
Short Fiction
by Rachna Mara

A collection of interweaving short stories, Of Customs and Excise links together the lives of several very different women across oceans and decades. Some we meet in India, others in England and still others in Canada. In one story, an Indian woman who becomes pregnant is rushed quickly into marriage. In other stories we meet a doctor, a white woman, who helps hide her secret, and the doctor's servant whose background and position cause her to depise her well-meaning employer. Many years later, in Prince Edward Island, we meet that baby, now a teenager rebelling against her family's customs which are so different from the society around her. Women bound together by their gender, by the effects of racism, oppression and sexism are only a few of the themes explored in this compelling collection of original stories.