Reviewed by: A Moment Comes by Jennifer Bradbury Elizabeth Bush Bradbury, Jennifer . A Moment Comes. Atheneum, 2013. 278p. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4169-7876-3 $16.99 E-book ISBN 978-1-4169-8302-6 $9.99 R Gr. 7-10. Three culturally disparate teens, caught in the perilous political drama of the 1947 partition of India, find their destinies irrevocably interlocked as they temporarily reside in the same household. Tariq, a Muslim, avidly accepts a position as assistant to Mr. Darnsley, a British cartographer working on the proposed boundary lines, in hope that his employer will recommend him for admission to Oxford. Anupreet, a homebody who shares her Sikh family's traditional values, is urged by her family to [End Page 77] work in the Darnsley residence, where she will presumably be safe from the kind of assault that left her scarred and shaken. Margaret Darnsley, the cartographer's daughter, has been dragged to India by her parents until the scandal of her romance with an American soldier has sufficiently cooled. Margaret is smitten with Tariq and wouldn't mind a fling; Tariq only has eyes for Anupreet but understands that their religious backgrounds render a relationship taboo; Anupreet finds her horizons expanding as she builds a cautious friendship with wild child Margaret, but she really just wants to go home. Then Tariq's thuggish acquaintance Sameer corners him into playing a dangerous criminal-political game, the massacre of Anupreet's relatives in a train hijacking radicalizes her brother and upsets the family balance, and Margaret's ill-advised attempts at charity work cost a beggar child his limbs and nearly cost Anupreet and Tariq their lives. Bradbury is equally adept at limning characters ill at ease with their own motivations and at infusing historical background smoothly into the interlocking teen mini-dramas. An historical note is appended, but most necessary background is seamlessly incorporated into the alternating chapters in the three teens' voices, and readers who pick this up for the romantic triangle will come away with a surprising grasp of Britain's withdrawal from the mighty flagship of its empire, and the tragic cost of the "population exchange" that accompanied independence. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois