The freedom seeker

"Twelve-year-old Simi Singh's life in Northern India is filled with love, family traditions, and ordinary worries about hockey competitions, school exams, and avoiding the snide remarks of her class nemesis. But when a single rock carrying a note crashes through their window during their Id celebration, Simi's life will shatter. Her Sikh father and Muslim mother's interfaith marriage is becoming a target of violent vigilantes. Faced with rising threats, they must make an impossible choice: stay and risk their lives, or flee their homeland. Simi's father is the first of them to make the journey to the U.S., but when their petition to be reunited in America is denied, Simi and her mother are left with no choice but to attempt a perilous crossing through the Arizona desert with the help of a smuggler"--