Secret Daughter - Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Secret Daughter: A Novel  by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

In a village in India in 1984, Kavita gives birth to a girl, her second daughter. The first daughter had been ripped out of her arms by her husband while only a few minutes old, never to be seen again. It is common practice to dispose of girls. Girls cost money in dowries and they leave home. Sons are the pride and joy and will stay to work the farms. In an effort to save this daughter Kavita manages to keep her survival secret and only days afterward makes the long trek on foot and by wagon to the city of Bombay where she gives her baby a name, "Usha" meaning dawn, and agonizingly hands her over to an orphanage.

In America pediatrician Somer gets the heartbreaking news that she is unable to have children. While she's in mourning for the children she will never have, her mother-in-law from India tells them of a little girl with hazel eyes that resides in the orphanage. She would be a nice match for blond Somer and her Indian husband Krishnan. It takes months and a trip to India where Somer struggles with the country and its customs but they bring home one year old Asha, meaning hope.

Throughout the novel we jump from chapter to chapter focusing on several characters, notably Kavita and Somer and later Asha. Gowda does a beautiful job bringing us to India and showing its two faces. The luxurious and romantic India with the lush fabrics, celebrations and food, and the downtrodden India where we see poverty unlike anything that resembles poverty in North America. Gowda doesn't skimp on this and is brutally honest about the tenuous survival of women and girls among the poor. We see how Kavita, because of culture and poverty, must find a way to have peace with the man that caused the loss of her daughters, while Somer's culture and money allow her choices when her marriage is on shaky ground.

But what resonates strongest is the power of mothers as Asha comes to discover when she goes on a hunt for her biological parents and finds out the sad truth of the plight of baby girls in a country and a people that she belongs to because of biology and adoption, yet doesn't because of her American upbringing.

This is a heartbreaking and yet inspiring novel from this first time novelist. Unlike Eat, Pray, Love which made me have a mad desire to visit Italy, this did not give me the desire to visit India although it has given me a desire for a beautiful sari.

Gowan is a Canadian born of Indian immigrants who received her university education in the states and resides there now. She worked as a volunteer in an Indian orphanage and through her background, culture and experience she was able to write this novel of three worlds. The upper middle-class world of American doctors, the privileged and extravagant world of upper class India, and the world of the poverty stricken in India.

At almost 350 pages it is a surprisingly quick read and one that is difficult to put down. A highly  recommended read for any mother, anyone affected by adoption, anyone who is interested in India, or just anyone.