Inheritance

Indira Ganesan

On the surface, fifteen-year-old Sonil has come to her adored grandmother’s house on a small island off the coast of India to mend her shaky health. Secretly, however, she longs to find out why her mysteriously distant mother agreed to have her sent away as a child.

She spends her time studying Italian with her absentminded uncle and talking about boys and clothes with her favorite cousin until she finds the perfect escape from her mother’s rejection–a passionate affair with a young American. But the affair will have a surprising outcome, forcing Sonil to forgive her mother and to look to herself for the answers she will need in the coming years.

“Ganesan describes Sonil’s anxieties and ambitions with moving intensity. . . . [She] has created an appealing young heroine whose determination and sensitivity wins us over.”-Edward Hower, New York Times Book Review (1998)

“Characters leap off the pages and into our hearts. . . . Ganesan crafts her work with such a gracefully light touch that readers leave the book with the sense of having just experienced something exquisitely fine.”-Joan Hinkemeyer, Rocky Mountain News (1998)

“Ganesan’s ingenious charms as a social and spiritual observer bejewel the novel. . . . People float in and land fleetingly, like mirages, on the island, which begins to resemble a microcosmic kaleidoscope of the human, the natural, and the magical folded into one-a small, storied panoply of Ganesan’s imagination.”-Kirkus Reviews(1998)

“A good book can take us to an exotic locale, flood us with emotions or remind us of that special summer that awakened adulthood. A very good book can do all of these vividly, realistically, seamlessly. Indira Ganesan’s Inheritance is such a book.” —The Columbus Dispatch

“Graceful, economical, and charming.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“[Ganesan] writes a young girl’s heart and mind with a true and gentle hand.” —Kansas City Star