In 1978, 8-year-old Ajay, his brother, Birju, and their mother are preparing to leave New Delhi for New York City, where their father/husband has already found work as an accountant. The three are from a far less developed, much poorer India than that of today. At the time, "not every family hired a band to play outside their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country," writes Sharma, "Still many families did," anticipating the glorious Western riches to come. For the first few months in the U.S., it seems as if the family's golden emigration dreams have come true. The boys thrill at the wild joys of fresh, hot water from a tap and have the "sense of being in a fairy tale...with a jug that is always full of milk or bag that never empties of food." Then an accident—in the most American of places, a summery, suburban pool—undoes everything. Sharma writes so lucidly and truly about loss, all from a child's perspective, that reading this novel may just make you feel like a young, bewildered stranger in your own land. Expect to empathize until it hurts—only to ultimately ask yourself, as Ajay's mother does, "Is your happiness not my happiness?"
— Leigh Newman
