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VIRTUAL: Rishi Reddi / Passage West
July 15, 2020 @ 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm PDT
Booksmith and The Bindery host a virtual event with Rishi Reddi (Karma and Other Stories) for her debut novel, Passage West. Please join us!
We’ll be streaming live on our Facebook page.
Friends, neighbors: If you’d like to support the store while we are otherwise closed in the interest of public health, you can do that in the usual ways:
> Buy the book and we’ll deliver it directly to your door.
> Buy a gift certificate, which we keep on file and never expire.
> Make a donation.
Thank you very much for your support – we’re proud to be a legacy business and a mainstay of the Haight-Ashbury since 1976!
1914: Ram Singh arrives in the Imperial Valley on the Mexican border, reluctantly accepting his friend Karak’s offer of work and partnership in a small cantaloupe farm. Ram is unmoored; fleeing violence in Oregon, he desperately longs to return to his wife and newborn son in Punjab—but he is duty bound to make his fortune first.
In the Valley, American settlement is still new and the rules are ever shifting. Alongside Karak; Jivan and his wife, Kishen; and Amarjeet, a U.S. soldier, Ram struggles to farm in the unforgiving desert. When he meets an alluring woman who has fought in Mexico’s revolution, he strives to stay true to his wife. The Valley is full of settlers hailing from other cities and different continents. The stakes are high and times are desperate—just one bad harvest or stolen crop could destabilize a family. And as anti- immigrant sentiment rises among white residents, the tensions of life in the west finally boil over.
In her ambitious debut novel, Rishi Reddi, award-winning author of Karma and Other Stories, explores an enduring question: Who is welcome in America? Richly imagined and beautifully rendered, Passage West offers a moving portrait of one man’s search for home.
Rishi Reddi is the author of the story collection Karma and Other Stories, which received the 2008 L.L. Winship /PEN New England Award for Fiction. Her work appears in Best American Short Stories 2005, has been broadcast on National Public Radio, and was selected as an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize. She is also a recipient of fellowships and grants from the MacDowell Colony, Breadloaf, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the U.S. Department of State. She was born in Hyderabad, India, and grew up in Great Britain and the United States. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Northeastern University School of Law and lives in Cambridge, MA.
This is a free, all-ages event.
To have Passage West sent to your door, order here or below.