Missy – Meet the dazzling, unforgettable Missy, in this year’s must-read debut

St Ursula’s Convent, Madras. The girls here are destined to be nuns or servants, but seventeen-year-old Savi, intelligent and with a gift for languages, dreams of escape. She’s taken on as a governess for the wealthy Nandiyar family.

The horrific events of a single night compel Savi and her lover, Ananda, to embark on a dangerous journey, at the end of which they re-emerge in America under new identities. Forty years later, Savi, now known as Missy, is living the American dream in Chicago. She is the pillar of the South Asian community and mother to two brilliant young women, Mansi and Shilpa.

But the past is only a tremor away. Varun, a charming doctor, enters their lives, and his arrival sets off a chain of events that puts Missy’s world in jeopardy.

An extraordinary debut, Missy is the story of a remarkable woman―tender in pain, courageous in crisis. This is a captivating novel that sheds light on the allure of assimilation and the idea that you can never outrun your past.