“Child, whatever you do, know the difference between ambition and greed,” non-profit founder Viswanath recalls her father telling her as she grew up. Echoes of Light finds her setting that wisdom down for others, along with insights gleaned from a lifetime that has taken from India to Afghanistan to the world at large. In a preface, she urges readers to understand that “destructive greed, self-obsession, petty politics, corrupt overwhelming capitalism, and fanatic extremism” are destroying humanity and the planet, and she asks us to be ambitious in kindness, empathy, and gratitude. In the globe-trotting poems and short stories that follow she warns that “the human touch has been killed” in our lives.

Crafted to a purpose, Viswanath’s poetry tends toward the direct and even didactic, free verse that celebrates possibility and the natural world, decries the inhuman pace of contemporary life, and reminds readers that no matter what you do—or how much fame and fortune you’ve accumulated—“You return to whence you came from, my friend.” The stories cut deeper and, like their author’s biography, range the globe, set among Indonesian garment factories, the Surobi district of Kabul, the Hindukush mountains, and a grandmother’s home in Coimbatore. Each centers a lesson about our essential humanity, but their approaches are as varied as their locales, with parables, literary realism, and even a Scheherazade-inspired tale within a tale.

Viswanath proves adept, in her fiction, at bringing life and character to the precepts she advocates, and her handling of various cultures, peoples, and locations is arresting and respectful. (That’s little surprise, as she’s the founder of Healing Lives, which funds the education of future nurses and doctors in Kenya, India, and Bangladesh.) In Echoes of Light she fulfills a related ambition, presenting characters faced with what she presents as the everyday human dilemma: “The choice is ours—to make each day beautiful and memorable; or toxic and damaging.”

Takeaway: This global-minded collection of fiction and poetry urges us all to make a difference in the world each day.

Great for fans of: Jamil Zak’s The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson’s Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A