Tahmima Anam's compelling novel A Golden Age (HarperCollins) opens with a widow's wrenching admission to her dead husband ("Dear Husband, I lost our children today") and deftly exposes the "swallowing, hungry love" that makes this embattled mother capable of anything, heroic or criminal. You get the sense, as you read Rehana's story, embedded in the historic 1971 war of liberation in the author's native Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), that Anam is cracking open secrets, personal and political, to let the healing begin.