Oleander Girl

Awesome book and highly recommended. In Chitra Divakaruni's most recent book, Oleander Girl (Simon and Schuster), winner of the American Book Award, a young Bengali woman from a prestigious and traditional family falls in love with a man from a nouveau-riche business family in Kolkata, a city shaken by the conflict between the old and new ways of life. On the verge of marriage, she will learn a family secret that will upend her sense of self, force her to postpone her nuptials, and force her to travel to America, where she will ultimately undergo a transformation she cannot have foreseen. Oleander Girl is a study of the effects of racism that is set in the turbulent world of post-September 11th America and a divided India in 2002.