Indian Girl

Hi, I'm Radhika Mehta, and I'm getting married this week. I work at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. Thank you for hearing my story. However, let me warn you. You may not like me too much. One, I make a lot of money. Two, I have an opinion on everything. Three, I have had a boyfriend before. Ok, maybe two. Best-selling author Chetan Bhagat, writing for the first time in a female voice, brings to you One Indian Girl, the heart-warming story of a modern Indian girl.

Jyoti is the “perfect” Indian American daughter: She stayed out of trouble, looked after her younger sisters, and married a man her parents approved of. So when her husband, Ashok, pushes her to quit her dream job as head chef to focus on conceiving, she obliges, knowing this will please her parents—only for Ashok to leave her when she cannot carry to term. Now unemployed, childless, and divorced, a disgrace to her Gujarati family, Jyoti books a ticket to Tuscany for the summer to visit her best friend (and fellow social outcast), Karishma.

In 1903, over 300 Indian children from across America lived at the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School in a remote, isolated valley in Montana. Among the children were a handful of teenage girls, many who had only lived in tepees. They quickly learned to play basketball and resoundingly crushed all opponents, including men's and women's university teams. After the games, the girls recited Shelley and Longfellow, played mandolins and violins, sang, danced, and pantomimed.

Indian Creek Massacre and Captivity of Hall Girls was written by Charles Martin Scanlan in 1915. The Indian Creek Massacre arose in 1832 at LaSalle County, Illinois, after a dispute about a settler-constructed dam that blocked fish from reaching a Native American village downstream. It’s a unique historical snapshot of early America centered around Sylvia and Rachel Hall, sisters who were the only survivors of the massacre and were abducted, as well as the story of Chief Shabona who was a member of the Ottowa and Potawatomi.