Lucky Boy

Ricky Ricardo, my Lucky Boy

I just finished reading Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran.  SO GOOD.  Although, the title is slightly misleading.  But it's also thought provoking to think about that title after you finish reading it. 

It's a well told story, with great characters.  The main charactors are two women who's lives intersect by one "lucky" boy.  Soli is from Mexico and she illegally immigrates to American, and becomes pregnant during her journey to get here.  Kavya is an American citizen who decides to foster a child, in hopes of adoption, once she has given up on the idea of having her own biological child. 

Lucky Boy was long (just under 470 pages), but didn't feel that way.  There was no clear side you were necessarily rooting for, and you knew that in the end, someone was going to be heartbroken.  But as sad and as hard as this story is, it's based on many stories that are TRUE.  And it probably is one of the "luckier" ones. 

Such a current topic, and one I loved really delving into and seeing it from a few different angles.

This is the author's first book.  I'm always amazed when someone's first book is something this brilliant.  But like I recently heard Liz Gilbert say on her "Magic Lessons" podcast, your first book didn't just take the 2 years (or whatever it took to actually write)- It took all that time of all the years of living and cultivating that idea in your subconcious before you ever started the actual writing of it.  So if Shanthi's next book takes anything less than something like 32 years, well, then she's really blowing and going.  I can't imagine what it would feel like to begin on the next project after one so masterful as this.  Yikes.

Anyway, I loved this book.  I was lucky to have found it.