Helpful Score: 5
I highly recommend Secret Daughter. It is a powerful, moving story that sweeps from romote villages in India to the beautiful shores of California to bustling cities in India such as Mumbai. The novel centers around Kavita, who is forced to make a heartwrenching decision regarding her newborn daughter. Because of her poverty and her husband's fanatic desire to have a son, Kavita is forced to deliver her baby to an orphanage rather than have her child killed. The baby is adopted by an American couple, two doctors, Somer and Khrishna. Although Krishna was born and raised in India he came to America for college and fell in love with blond, blue eyed Somer. Somer, who has suffered through several miscarriages is desperate to be a mother. The story takes you through the next 20 years and illustrates the pain and heartache that both families suffer as they deal with loss, hope, failure, a broken marriage and despair. This is a beautiful novel. Bravo.
Helpful Score: 2
I read this for my local book club's October 2012 pick, and I really enjoyed it!
It's a very powerful and impressionable story about infertility, racial and cultural obstacles, adoption, abandonment issues, marital conflict, and much more!
The first half of the story was nearly un-put-downable for me! So absorbed was I in the wonderful contrast between the lives of Somer in America and Kavita in India...and, of course, in how things would fare where poor baby Asha was concerned.
I think the author did a wonderful job illustrating the problems that are likely to arise in situations such as this, and demonstrated good, healthy pathways to overcoming them.
Without spoiling anything, I will say that I was a little disappointed in the ending, I feel a missed opportunity for creating something emotionally lasting, but I wasn't disappointed enough for it to detract from my enjoyment of the story as a whole.
I give this one a strong B+, and I'm looking forward to the author's next book.
★
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It's a very powerful and impressionable story about infertility, racial and cultural obstacles, adoption, abandonment issues, marital conflict, and much more!
The first half of the story was nearly un-put-downable for me! So absorbed was I in the wonderful contrast between the lives of Somer in America and Kavita in India...and, of course, in how things would fare where poor baby Asha was concerned.
I think the author did a wonderful job illustrating the problems that are likely to arise in situations such as this, and demonstrated good, healthy pathways to overcoming them.
Without spoiling anything, I will say that I was a little disappointed in the ending, I feel a missed opportunity for creating something emotionally lasting, but I wasn't disappointed enough for it to detract from my enjoyment of the story as a whole.
I give this one a strong B+, and I'm looking forward to the author's next book.
★
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×°× ` ·.¸.·´ ×°×
Helpful Score: 2
Secret Daughter is a wonderful story , actually 2 stories and 2 families, whose lives, while separate and who live in two different parts of the world, are connected through the birth if a daughter in India who is adopted and raised in America. It deals with the issue of who is a family. While many cultural, socio-economic, and gender preference issues are inherently part of the story, there are no value judgments placed on the choices the characters find they have to make. You get to know most of the characters quite well. I really loved this book. I learned a lot. It will stay with you for a long time. Both sad and wonderful.
I enjoyed this book very much. It was about being female in India and about the joys and challenges of adoption. It was quite a quick read and was thought provoking. It made me grateful that my new little granddaughter will have a life full of opportunity and sad for others who do not have that fate.
This book really tugged at my heart strings when a mother is forced to give up her newborn baby because it was a girl. The mother never gave up thinking about the baby she had to place in an orphanage. The daughter never gave up thinking and wondering about her biological mother and father even though she dearly loved her adoptive parents. It is a good read.
