Fiction Pick of the Week: Secret Daughter

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda 2010

An unimaginable sacrifice creates an intertwined story of loss, discovery and acceptance. Gowda’s first novel, Secret Daughter, is a vibrant story about the ties that bind. In the 1980s, in a small village in India, a woman gives birth to her second daughter. Knowing the fate of the child being born a girl, the mother secretly makes a long and tiring journey on foot to have the baby put in an orphanage. The novel follows the child Asha and her adoptive family in the United States as well as her biological family. The narrative shifts between several key characters allowing the reader to be fully immersed in each character’s personal struggles as they deal with the repercussions of their decisions. A flowing and powerful novel, Secret Daughter has remained on the Globe and Mail’s Best Sellers List for several months. I think it would appeal to readers who liked Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, and The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.