While The Road to Agra won international acclaim for Sommerfelt and touched readers with the central characters' plight, it is, nevertheless, a superficial look at the situation in India.

Sommerfelt's central concern is to present India as a poor country that is ill-equipped to care for its subjects. She suggests that its only hope lies in the help it can get from Western countries.

The protagonists' trek to Agra wrings sympathy from her Western audience, but it also gives the author the opportunity to make her story more dramatic.

Sommerfelt also glorifies the West for its charitable efforts on India's behalf, such as when the children hear on the radio that WHO is giving another one million rupees for the treatment of lepers and that doctors and nurses will visit the villages with free milk and medicine.

Lalita Prasad, the Indian doctor in Agra, voices Sommerfelt's...