August 1, 2016
Despite having been adopted from India, Taj Rowland is an excelling American teen: senior-class president, a varsity athlete, and popular with his classmates at his all-white Colorado high school. But when he's matched with an Indian family during a study-abroad program in London, Taj begins to remember pieces of his childhood, including his original name, Chellamuthu, and the family from which he was kidnapped and sold to an orphanage. Hoping to understand more about his identity, Taj immerses himself in Indian culture, starts an import-export company, and eventually marries an Indian woman, Priya, who turns out to have a surprising connection to his past. Armed with a map drawn from memory and accompanied by his business partner, Christopher Raj, Taj returns to India to search for his birth family. Wright (The Rent Collector, 2012) turns the story of the real-life Chellamuthu/Taj into a meditation on identity and the meaning of family, and a novel that is sure to be a book-club favorite.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)