Dear Life is full of lyrical, brave and audacious poems that dare to be affirmative despite all the crises, traumas, and outright losses life throws at us. Acharya is a poet unafraid of the harshness the world often visits on her or individuals more widely across time and cultures, aware too of the humor inherent in some of our behaviors She cedes no ground to prose, her poetry ranging from exploring the intimate loss of a brother to the devastation of Aleppo after artillery destroyed it during the Syrian civil war; from the intricacy of love, both its failures and successes, to the nature of gods and goddesses, fate, and what we can do in their face. The terrible pace of cultural and technological change we are living through as each of us tries to realize our full potential while we maintain a grasp on self and history is one of the immediately personal and gripping themes in Dear Life, involving the hardwon ability both to admit life's costliness together with how precious and exhilarating it remains. Hers is a rich blend of Indian, British and American cultural and poetic heritages. She writes with a poetic freedom and size enriched by all three traditions. She speaks her mind, reflects, evokes, and transmutes experience into something golden for each of us. Hers is a largesse of spirit, honesty, and, as she writes in the title poem: Knowing what all my words are what others make of them,/I teach them compassion, forgiveness, understanding. Few have her range.