Secret Daughter (Shilpi Somaya Gowda)
Perhaps the best way to describe this book is “A Tale of two Mothers”. Ultimately however, even that title may fall short as the book explores childlessness in America and female infanticide in India. Kavita Merchant, an impoverished woman in an Indian village, has already lost one daughter to her husband and in-laws and is determined that her second daughter will not face the same fate. So she makes the difficult journey to an orphanage in Mumbai to give up her daughter Usha so that she may hopefully have a better fate. The opposite of this picture is in Somer Whitman who has married an Indian fellow doctor and finds out that she can’t have children. When Krishnan, her husband, suggests that they adopt a child from India, she is initially resistant but changes her mind when she sees Usha’s photo. The book then goes on to trace the fortunes of the two families over the next 25 years.
The writing seems a little light on Somer’s side at first but by the conclusion of the tale, Gowda has managed to weave a fascinating tapestry of familial emotions, maternal love and fear of loss, grief and perhaps in its own way, redemption.
Krishan Pathak