Anita Rau Badami — The Hero's Walk

Bloomsbury Publishing 2002 Paperback. Sripathi Rao's life is as arid as the dusty South Indian town where he lives. All he ever wanted was an ordinary life with a solid job and a happy family. But Sripathi has never been a lucky man. Now ageing and disenchanted, struggling to keep his job, Sripathi lives in the crumbling ancestral house with his lonely spinster sister, embittered mother, and a wife and son he hardly knows anymore. His only joy is his talented, vibrant daughter Maya. But when Maya marries Alan, a fellow student at her American university, Sripathi angrily cuts her off, until he receives a phone call from Vancouver informing him that Maya and her husband have been killed in a car crash. All Sripathi is left with are his regrets and Maya's seven-year-old daughter, Nandana. Confused and scared, little Nandana must move to India, and adjust to a life with the family she has never met before. (ISBN: 9780747557968). Very Good.