by Shilpi Somaya GowdaWilliam Morrow
Kavita lives in a small, impoverished village in rural India. Tradition dictates that she must bear her husband a boy. But when a girl is born, her husband takes the child and leaves the house. He returns without her. Her second child is also a girl, but this time Kavita fights back. She gives the baby a name - Usha - and within hours of the birth, she and her sister walk the long journey to Bombay. There she leaves the child at an orphanage with a silver bangle, a name and a chance at life. Those are her gifts.
Somer and Krishnan are successful physicians in California. Unable to have children, they decide to adopt. They travel to Krishnan’s native country and at an orphanage in Bombay, they are enchanted by the baby with the unusual eyes, whose name has been muddled to Asha. They return to California and settle down to live the American dream. India is far away, geographically, culturally and emotionally. Or so it seems.
Secret Daughter is a family saga and Gowda moves back and forth between continents and cultures effortlessly. This is a story of the endurance of hearts, of marriages, of women, and of our heart’s need to find the place we belong. Gowda’s descriptive prose creates rich visuals of the crowded streets and steaming heat of Bombay. She contrasts this with the sterility of the nuclear family life of Krishnan and Somer. When Asha goes to Bombay with a journalist project to work with children of the slums, she is embraced by her sprawling extended family who are grateful and delighted to finally welcome this Indian/American child.
Kavita never stops yearning and hoping for her daughter. Gowda gives a face to the anguish of women who give birth to unwanted girl children who are taken away, perhaps even killed, but they are never forgotten by the mothers who bear them. These women carry grief through their lives for the daughters they were unable to protect.
Gowda tells a rich, interconnected story of families and of ties that never break, no matter how thinly they are stretched or how far the distance of time or geography.
Shilpi Gowda is a native of Canada, growing up in Toronto before moving to the USA. She currently lives in Texas with her husband and children. This is her first novel.
