Description

A novel in two acts – told eighteen years apart – gives voice to both mother (Ayesha) and daughter (Mira) after an unplanned teen pregnancy led Ayesha to place Mira up for adoption.

Coming to the US to study, Ayesha is swept up in a whirlwind romance with Suresh – an Indian boy who reminds her of home. Mere months away from starting university, she falls pregnant and finds herself alone. She makes the difficult decision to hide her pregnancy and put her daughter up for adoption, before returning to India.

Years later, seventeen-year-old Mira Fuller-Jensen has had a comfortable childhood but has never felt quite like she fit in their majority white community. All she knows is that her mums adopted her when she was born and that her biological mother was a student who went back to India. When she comes across letters addressed to her from her birth mother, she sees a way to finally capture that feeling of belonging.

Her mother writes that if Mira can forgive her for having to give her up, she should find a way to travel to India for her eighteenth birthday and meet her. Mira knows she’ll always regret it if she doesn’t go. But is she actually ready for what she will learn?