Shanthi Sekaran, "Lucky Boy" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2017)

An optimistic young Mexican woman gets pregnant while trying to cross the border into the states.  An Indian-American woman struggles with infertility. When undocumented Solimar is detained by the state, Kavya and her husband foster and then fall in love with her little boy. They’re good people, the law is on their side, and it’s hard not to root for them, but we’re forced to ask ourselves - what defines parenthood? Is it the biological connection or is it the daily grind of feeding, changing diapers, and tending to all their needs? In addition to a mother’s love, Lucky Boy (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2017) deals with immigration, undocumented workers, the struggle between haves and the have-nots, infertility, survival, and love.

Shanthi Sekaran is a writer and educator from Berkeley, California. Lucky Boy was named an IndieNext Great Read and an NPR Best Book of 2017. It won the Housatonic Book Award and was a finalist for Stanford University's Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and stories have also appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, and the LA Review of Books. Sekaran is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, an AWP mentor, and she teaches writing at Mills College. She was born in Sacramento, is the daughter of immigrants from India, and has two older brothers, a husband, two young sons, and a cat.

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