Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton

            Chanda Kabelo, the main character in this novel struggles with a unique journey of maintaining a family and striving towards a better life despite the society she lives in. She travels through her journey alone, however along the way there's always someone there to lend a helping hand such as a friend, a neighbor, a teacher or her mother. Chanda moves from the country side in Sub-Saharan Africa to a more urban area, where she's exposed to new obstacles. This society and culture struggles with accepting the truth of the pandemic of AIDS because they're all uneducated and ignorant about this disease. Many would rather go off and die or commit suicide to spare their families from living with the shame of knowing they were an "AIDS Family." .
             The story opens with an obstacle in Chanda's journey, her little sister Sara, has just died from colic. She feels all alone when dealing with her sister's death. Chanda's mother shuts down, and her step-father drinks and sleeps around to forget. It isn't until she cries with her mom, where they share each other's pain. "A preacher says: 'The Lord never gives us more than we can bear.' I think of Mama. I think of Esther. I want to smash his face in (162)." Chanda struggles with the existence of God and whether or not He's there for her throughout the book. It seems as if it's almost adversity after adversity because by this time, at 16 years old, Chanda has had four different fathers. Her real father was killed in the diamond mines soon after they moved. Her first stepfather abused her; the second died of a stroke; the third was a drunken philanderer who soon dies. She battles her own thoughts of whether or not she and her loved ones carry AIDS. In a society where AIDS is shunned and rumors are passed on from person to person like the disease itself, Chanda is forced to give the impression to her neighbors that everything is fine, when in reality it isn't.