Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

genre: adult fiction

In a remote Indian village a baby girl is born to a desperate mother.

A world away, in America, a woman and her Indian husband long for a child but cannot have one of their own.

Secret Daughter is the story of these two different families and the baby girl that connects their fates. Continually changing viewpoints and locations, we journey into the heart of what makes a family and the sacrifices we need to make when we truly love someone.  From the slums of Mumbai to the streets of San Francisco, this book covers twenty years of growth, heartache, regret and discovery.

If a book can make me shed tears that feel real, that means something.  I didn't always love it, sometimes the white American mother felt a bit caricatured and I didn't love how she was usually painted as the bad guy, but by the end, I felt like I understood her better and it didn't bother me so much.  I really liked changing from the U.S. to India and thinking about how two lives can be so very different.

The Indian parts of the book felt so rich and authentic, it's a great cultural look for those who don't know much about Indian life and like I said, by the end I had a few actual tears.  The lessons our orphaned girl learns really touched me and didn't cheese me out the way I was worried they would.  I think as a whole, I really did like it.
 

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