Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy, published earlier this month by Putnam.


Shanthi teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts. And her work has appeared in best New American Voices and Canteen as well as online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine and recently The New York Times. Her first novel was The Prayer Room.

Before we begin...


Lucky Boy is a novel about a sweet little boy, Ignacio El Viento Castro Valdez, Iggy, Nacho, whose little life is made extremely complicated by the fact that two “forces” love him dearly.

The book details the relationship of Kavka and Rishi Reddy, Ignacio’s foster parents and Soli, Solimar Castro Valdez, Iggy’s natural mother who spends her brief time in America trying desperately to hold on to him and then to rejoin him.

The book, in a non-judgmental fashion deals with the issues associated with immigration, documentation, motherhood, fosterparenthood and the overarching needs and rights of a child.

The reader is asked, early on, to go to work, to try to determine for him or herself who is right, what is best and to make a decision as to what comes down as the proper conclusion to the story.