Shanthi Sekaran, Lucky Boy

Bookshop Santa Cruz is pleased to welcome Shanthi Sekaran for the paperback release tour of her highly acclaimed novel, Lucky Boy. In this astonishing novel, Shanthi Sekaran gives voice to the devotion and anguish of motherhood through two women bound together by their love for one boy. Soli, a young undocumented Mexican woman in Berkeley, CA, finds that motherhood offers her an identity in a world where she's otherwise invisible. When she is placed in immigrant detention, her son comes under the care of Kavya, an Indian-American wife overwhelmed by her own impossible desire to have a child. As Soli fights for her son, Kavya builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else's child. Exploring the ways in which dreams and determination can reshape a family, Sekaran transforms real life into a thing of beauty. From rural Oaxaca to Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto to the dreamscapes of Silicon Valley, Lucky Boy offers a moving and revelatory look at the evolving landscape of the American dream and the ever-changing borders of love.

Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. She is the author of The Prayer Room and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Best New American Voices, and Canteen, as well as online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. A California native, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children. Lucky Boy is her second 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." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[H]umanizes current discussions of immigration, privilege, and what it means to be an American....Highly recommended and would be a strong choice for book clubs.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“[D]eeply engrossing . . . Effectively puts human faces on an issue that is often discussed solely in broad, general terms.” —Bookreporter

“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
This free event will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Open seating. Seats are generally set up one hour prior to the event's start time. This event will launch Bookshop Santa Cruz's Fall Words to Act On partnership with the Community Action Board: Santa Cruz County Immigration Project.