Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran Narrated by Soneela Nankani, Roxana Ortega

Overview

A gripping tale of adventure and searing reality, Lucky Boy gives voice to two mothers bound together by their love for one lucky boy.

“Sekaran has written a page-turner that's touching and all too real.”-People

“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

Eighteen years old and fizzing with optimism, Solimar Castro-Valdez embarks on a perilous journey across the Mexican border. Weeks later, she arrives in Berkeley, California, dazed by first love found then lost, and pregnant. This was not the plan. Undocumented and unmoored, Soli discovers that her son, Ignacio, can become her touchstone, and motherhood her identity in a world where she's otherwise invisible.

Kavya Reddy has created a beautiful life in Berkeley, but then she can't get pregnant and that beautiful life seems suddenly empty. When Soli is placed in immigrant detention and Ignacio comes under Kavya's care, Kavya finally gets to be the singing, story-telling kind of mother she dreamed of being. But she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else's child.

“Nacho” to Soli, and “Iggy” to Kavya, the boy is steeped in love, but his destiny and that of his two mothers teeters between two worlds as Soli fights to get back to him. Lucky Boy is a moving and revelatory ode to the ever-changing borders of love.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times - Carmela Ciuraru

Along with trenchant observations of privilege and power, Sekaran delves fearlessly into rape, infertility, adoption, identity politics and more…In pitting two very different kinds of immigrants against each other—one comfortably assimilated, the other helpless in every sense—Sekaran offers a brilliantly agonizing setup…Although a number of brutal events occur in this exceptional novel, comic relief is found throughout…

Publishers Weekly

10/03/2016
Sekaran’s second novel (after The Prayer Room) humanizes the issue of illegal immigration. Born in a small, impoverished village in Mexico, teenage Soli makes the dangerous journey across the border to the U.S. and ends up in Berkeley, Calif., living with her cousin, Silvia, and working as housekeeper to the well-to-do Cassidy family. In a parallel story, Kavya Reddy and her techie husband, Rishi, frustrated at their inability to get pregnant, decide to adopt. Having become pregnant en route to the U.S., Soli gives birth to a little boy she nicknames Nacho. Arrested, she is sent to immigrant detention and Nacho is placed in foster care, where he eventually comes to the attention of Kavya and Rishi, who attempt to adopt the boy. But they find there is a steep learning curve in becoming instant parents. From her cell in Washington State, Soli fights the Reddys for custody of her son. With the odds stacked against her, she is left with no choice but to make a desperate bid for freedom for herself and her son. Sekaran has made sure to tell a story without obvious villains (except for government functionaries). Despite the unsurprising and drawn-out ending, Soli and Kavya are both given sympathetic treatment thanks to the textured rendering of their lives, and readers will be emotionally invested in Nacho’s fate. Agent: Lindsay Edgecombe, Levine, Greenburg, Rostan Agency. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

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

Library Journal - Audio

★ 04/15/2017
Soli is still a teenager when she becomes pregnant during her journey from her native Mexican village to northern California. Partly joyous because she's love-struck, mostly nightmarish for what she must endure to survive, Soli enters the United States illegally and eventually finds a job as a nanny with a Berkeley couple. Not far from where Soli works, Kavya, the daughter of Indian immigrants, lives a very different life as one half of an educated, financially secure couple growing more frantic with each failed attempt to become parents. Both women will welcome the same child into their hearts; only one can claim motherhood for keeps. Sekaran's (The Prayer Room) latest uses engaging storytelling to explore hot-button topics of immigration, citizenship, entitlement, and the socioeconomic implications of modern parenthood. With assurance and sensitivity—including appropriate multilingual accents that aurally confront the shifting definitions of being American today—Roxana Ortega and Soneela Nankani volley back and forth between Soli's and Kavya's struggles to mother well, mother consistently, or mother at all. VERDICT Libraries hoping to satisfy savvy readers in search of timely, illuminating, realistic fiction will do well to acquire Sekaran on multiple platforms. ["By giving both sides equal weight, Sekaran evokes compassion for all the principals involved…. Highly recommended": LJ 11/1/16 starred review of the Putnam hc.]—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Library Journal

★ 11/01/2016
Living in a village in Oaxaca, Mexico, with few options, Solimar (Soli) makes a harrowing journey across the border and winds up in Berkeley, CA, where her cousin secures her a position as a housekeeper. Meanwhile, Berkeley couple Kavya and Rishi Reddy struggle with their inability to conceive a child. Through a series of circumstances, Kavya and Rishi end up as foster parents to Soli's son, Ignacio, while Soli puts everything on the line to be reunited with him. The novel also humanizes current discussions of immigration, privilege, and what it means to be an American. In contrast to the undocumented Soli, the Reddys are American-born citizens, but their Indian ethnicity at times causes them to be treated as outsiders. Considering what she sacrificed to get to America, Soli has little sympathy for her employers' first-world problems. VERDICT By giving both sides equal weight, Sekaran (The Prayer Room) evokes compassion for all the principals involved in the story, which readers will soon realize will not lead to a fully happy conclusion. Despite a few implausible plot twists in the book's last third, the novel is highly recommended and would be a strong choice for book clubs. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/16; "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/16.]—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-10-19
Two very different women reckon with pregnancy, childbirth, and the meaning of family in Berkeley, California.Kavya is a not-so-good Indian daughter who has failed to live up to her parents' expectations. She's desperate to have a baby with her husband, Rishi, but is unable to conceive. She wanted "to shape her own blood and body into sparkling new life." Soli is an undocumented Mexican immigrant determined to start a new life in America. Betrayed by her border-crossing companion, Manuel, though, she ends up pregnant and single. Without other options, Soli lands a job cleaning houses for a well-to-do white family. Sekaran (The Prayer Room, 2009) intertwines Soli's and Kavya's stories: Soli struggles to navigate life as the single mother of baby boy Ignacio in a strange land, while infertility begins to push Kavya and Rishi further and further apart. But when an accident winds up with Soli in police custody, Ignacio is taken away from her by social services and placed in foster care; Kavya and Rishi, who have given up on fertility treatments and signed up to become foster parents, are selected to provide a temporary home for the baby. While Soli is moved to a detention center for undocumented immigrants—where she undergoes violence and sexual abuse from law enforcement agents—Kavya and Rishi plot to permanently adopt Ignacio. The heartbreaking journeys of these two women, bound by love of the baby boy, are the center of the novel. 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.A superbly crafted and engrossing novel.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171907280
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/10/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Prologue
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Lucky Boy"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Shanthi Sekaran.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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