Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran

I am highly recommending LUCKY BOY by Shanthi Sekaran, particularly for book clubs.  This novel shares stories of two women: Soli is a young teenager who travels illegally to the United States from Mexico and Kavya Reddy is a driven professional who is thinking about starting a family with husband Rishi. Of course, their stories eventually intersect - maybe collide is a better term? And the main reason is the "lucky" boy, Nacho, of the title.

I found LUCKY BOY to be very moving and memorable and was intrigued by the moral choices it explored.  What would prompt Soli to leave loving parents and endure the trauma of entering the United States illegally? Should she give birth to a child conceived on that journey? What factors help and what hinders assimilation? How do US detention centers really function and treat people? Will that be changing in the future? What obligation, if any, do private employers have for their domestic help? How do different cultures and generations view adoption? For Nacho, born in the United States, what childhood experience is best and why?  To what extent should the adults and families involved be considered?

I read LUCKY BOY as an eBook so I did not really notice the length (over four hundred and fifty pages) and would still highly recommend this title, filled with sharp perceptions about life in Berkeley and about American social class strata: 

• “Do you know our people [tech employees] have walked out of Starbucks without paying because they’ve actually forgotten that the rest of the world pays for its food?"
• “She waited in a chair for two hours. She was learning that being rich in this country meant never having to wait. And being poor, even just a little poor like she was, meant steeping in impatience.”
• "More than five million children in the United States have at least one undocumented parent." (author note)

LUCKY BOY will be a likely selection for our upcoming book group.  Here is the link to the Discussion Guide for LUCKY BOY which received multiple starred reviews (Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal).