Competitive Non-Fiction

This is the story of two families, who are really one family.

The first is an American couple that is having trouble successfully conceiving a baby. He was born in India and his family is there. She is a white woman from California.  After years of trying for a child, they learn that their only option for having one is adoption. His mother is an important financial donor to an orphanage in Mumbai, and convinces the couple to adopt a baby from there.

The second family is another young couple living in a very rural, poor village in India. She is about to give birth and desperately hoping for a boy. If the child is a girl, the father will kill her as he did his sister; the horrible reality of their situation is that they can only afford one child and cannot afford the added cost of having a girl. When their daughter is born, the mother secrets her away to an orphanage in Mumbai, without the knowledge or consent of her husband. The American family travels to India while still in the grip of grief over learning of their infertility and adopts the little girl from the Mumbai orphanage.

What follows is a story about the many ways to build a family, the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, and the difficulties of maintaining a sense of family through cultural and racial differences. The author traces the paths of all three women as they come to grips with what has happened in their lives – both the choices they have made and the choices that have been taken from them. It’s a beautifully told story that doesn’t pull any punches or shy away from the complexities of class or race that naturally arise in a story about international adoption.

This novel pulls you in slowly, and holds you loosely. It’s not gripping, but I still found myself devouring it, even taking out a pen and underlining passages that I liked. It’s exceptionally well written and is relatable on many levels. However, some of the emotional conclusions came too easily and at least one of the characters has an epiphany that I’m not sure was the natural conclusion to her story. Still, even with these (somewhat minor) problems, it’s a beautiful and interesting story.