Lucky Boy

A heart-wrenching novel that gives voice to two mothers- a young undocumented Mexican woman and an Indian-American wife whose love for one lucky boy will bind their fates together Solimar Castro-Valdez is eighteen and drunk on optimism when she embarks on a perilous journey across the US/Mexican border. Weeks later she arrives on her cousin's doorstep in Berkeley, CA, dazed by first love found then lost, and pregnant. This was not the plan. But amid the uncertainty of new motherhood and her American identity, Soli learns that when you have just one precious possession, you guard it with your life. For Soli, motherhood becomes her dwelling and the boy at her breast her hearth. Kavya Reddy has always followed her heart, much to her parents' chagrin. A mostly contented chef at a UC Berkeley sorority house, the unexpected desire to have a child descends like a cyclone in Kavya's mid-thirties. When she can't get pregnant, this desire will test her marriage, it will test her sanity, and it will set Kavya and her husband, Rishi, on a collision course with Soli, when she is detained and her infant son comes under Kavya's care. As Kavya learns to be a mother-the singing, story-telling, inventor-of-the-universe kind of mother she fantasized about being-she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else's child. Lucky Boy is an emotional journey that will leave you certain of the redemptive beauty of this world. There are no bad guys in this story, no single obvious hero. Sekaran has taken real life and applied it to fiction; the results are moving and revelatory.

About the Author :
Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. Her first novel, The Prayer Room, was published by MacAdam Cage. A California native, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children.

Review :
Praise for Lucky Boy "Sekaran has written a page-turner that's touching and all too real."--People "Offers a brilliantly agonizing setup...[An] exceptional novel."--The New York Times "Pulses with vitality, pumped with the life breath of human sin and love."--USA Today "Topical and timely...Sekaran's book invites the reader to engage empathetically with thorny geopolitical issues that feel organic and fully inhabited by her finely rendered characters."--Chicago Tribune "With wit, empathy and a page-turning plot, the novel stirs ethical questions...that the author rightly refuses to answer. Sekaran has written a tender, artful story of the bravery of loving in the face of certain grief."--San Francisco Chronicle "A fiercely compassionate story about the bonds and the bounds of motherhood and, ultimately, of love."--Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans "Richly emotional."--Good Housekeeping "Like M.L. Stedman in The Light Between Oceans, Sekaran presents a complex moral dilemma that leaves readers incapable of choosing sides...A must read."--BookPage "Deeply compassionate...Delivers penetrating insights into the intangibles of motherhood and indeed, all humanity."--Booklist (starred review) "Both timely and timeless, depicting the comedy and delights of the world as well as its brutalities and injustices."--Edan Lepucki, author of California "A moving story."--InStyle "Heartbreaking and timely...Explores motherhood and lengths we will go to in order to achieve our dreams."--Real Simple "Will leave you spellbound."--Bustle "Sekaran is a master of drawing detailed, richly layered characters and relationships; here are the subtly nuanced lines of love and expectation between parents and children; here, too are moments of great depth and insight."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A heartfelt and moving novel that challenges our notions of motherhood and the true meaning of home."--Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans "[H]umanizes current discussions of immigration, privilege, and what it means to be an American...Would be a strong choice for book clubs."--Library Journal (starred review) "There are few easy solutions to life's toughest problems, but Lucky Boy goes a long way toward putting a humanizing face on them."--ShelfAwareness "A gripping, obsessive, character-driven narrative of sacrifice and identity--where the lives of two women become forever tangled in the roots of motherhood."--Simon Van Booy, author of The Illusion of Separateness "You'll have a hard time putting down this book, and when you finish it, you'll have a hard time not thinking, and aching, about it for a long, long time."--Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, author of Barefoot Dogs