“Blue Poppies” by Judith Wermuth-Atkinson (Balboa Press, 148 pages, $30.95 hardcover/$12.99 paperback)

India speaks to people. When my parents arrived in Bombay in 1953 with a small baby in tow, the country and its people captured my mother’s heart.

She came down with polio during her stay and was hospitalized for several months. Nevertheless, her ongoing impressions were of color, of energy, and of people whom she embraced. Her memories of India were all happy memories.

Judith Wermuth-Atkinson of Conway didn’t journey to India until she was 50.

Like my mother at a different stage of life, she fell in love almost immediately. She wanted to experience the villages and the people and the ways of life she encountered. Above all, she wanted to experience the spiritual side of India.

She writes about those experiences in “Blue Poppies: A Spiritual Travelogue from the Himalaya.” Her first trip to India was a Himalayan trek in a small group. The next year, she began her relationship with a young monk from whom she learned a great deal about yoga and about life.

She became part disciple, part student, and part mother figure to Siddhartha Krishna. Through him, she eventually met another spiritual leader who helped her learn even more. She gained a great deal of knowledge about Indian society.

As she writes early on, “I came to India to study the Vedas and yoga philosophy. For the next several years, I studied in India far more things than I had bargained for.”

Her book tells the story of many of her trips to India. As a narrator Wermuth-Atkinson is engaging. She shares both the spiritual and the practical experiences of her time in India.

She introduces many of the friends she has made to the reader — not just Siddhartha Krishna and his distinguished parents, for example, but also the woman who helped raise him and who still works for his family. She also shares some of her own background as an immigrant from Bulgaria. There she first studied spirituality — and learned many of the life lessons that shaped her ongoing story.

She tries very hard not to be judgmental when discussing Indian society and culture. Although she finds it difficult to understand the system of arranged marriages, for example, she is wise in presenting the appeal of that system to those she has befriended in India.

Above all, Judith Wermuth-Atkinson presents the magical, spiritual side of India — and of humanity — to the reader with modesty, charm, and diligence. “Blue Poppies” will speak to readers interested not only in travel but in the ways in which we all work to establish our beliefs and our relationships with the world at large.

Judith Wermuth-Atkinson will discuss “Blue Poppies” at Dobra Tea in Northampton on Friday, April 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. All are welcome.

Tinky Weisblat is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook” and “Pulling Taffy.” Visit her website, www.TinkyCooks.com. with the world at large.