Lucky Boy

Lucky Boy is Shanthi Sekaran’s 2017 novel that follows two mothers who are bound together in their love for a single child. Solimar Castro-Valdez sets out on a dangerous journey across the US/Mexican border, and when she arrives at her cousin’s doorstep in Berkeley, CA, a few weeks later, she discovers she is pregnant, her first love having quickly appeared and disappeared. As she struggles with the uncertainty of new motherhood, Soli comes to learn that having one prized treasure means you guard it with your life. Meanwhile, Kavya Reddy is living as a chef at a UC Berkeley sorority house when the unexpected desire to have a child descends on her. When she discovers she can’t get pregnant, this desire will set her on a crash course with Soli. An emotional journey that explores motherhood and American identity, Lucky Boy presents two compelling and revelatory portraits.

At the beginning of the novel, 18-year-old Solimar Castro-Valdez, or Soli, sets off on a difficult journey to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Her parents have paid a smuggler to help Soli get out of the tiny, forsaken town of Santa Clara Popocalco in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca, which has few job opportunities. Besides, Soli has a deep longing to be in California to make a better life for herself. She hopes to send some money home to her elderly parents so that they can build a decent house and have some nice things. Soli isn’t too aware of the politics going on, and the illegality of her plan does not bother her. She simply knows that she is poor, and escaping poverty means she must escape over the border.

As she makes her way over the treacherous landscape of Mexico, she comes to encounter thieves, rapists, gangsters, and her own hunger. She also meets a charming young man, Checo, who she falls for. It is only when she enters the US that Soli discovers she is pregnant. Soli ends up at her cousin Silvia’s home. As she struggles to adapt to a new country, she begins working as a housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy family and soon gives birth to her baby.



The narrative alternates between Soli and Kavya Reddy. The tonal shift in Soli’s and Kavya’s scenes demonstrate the stark differences in their life circumstances. At 35 years old, Kavya comes to decide that—despite her gorgeous Craftsman bungalow where she lives with her husband, Rishi, and her satisfying career as a chef—she feels the need to experience life as a mother in order to feel complete. The child of Indian immigrants, Kavya feels strong personal and cultural pressure to have a child but struggles with fertility issues. After a miscarriage, the couple is faced with the decision that they must adopt or foster a child if they wish to become parents.

A few months after Soli gives birth to her son, Ignacio, she is pulled over for a minor traffic offense and is then arrested and jailed. She is placed in an “alien” detention center, and Ignacio is put in the foster system, where he is eventually taken in by Kavya and Rishi. As the two find love and fulfillment in their new son, Soli must face abuse and her own hopelessness in a detention center. She is moved among various centers but is never told her location. She becomes Alien 127676 and cannot figure how she will find her son when they won’t even tell her where she is or if she will be released or deported.

In the midst of this struggle is the role the government plays as it faces with the decision to either give Ignacio back to Soli and send her to Mexico or to give custody to the Reddys, who are legally American, as is Ignacio.



Ultimately, Kavya and Rishi set into motion the proceedings to terminate Soli’s parental rights so that they can adopt Ignacio. Kavya is an eager mother, loving with an all-consuming intensity that Soli herself provided and wishes she still could. In the end, one of the mothers must let Ignacio go. He is eventually reunited with Soli, and the two are deported back to Mexico.

Lucky Boy brings together two complex stories of family and parenting but also takes on major societal issues of class privilege, immigration, and mass incarceration. The portraits the novel presents raise questions about family, nationality, and what it means to belong. Writing about financial inequality and the messiness that comes with loving someone as well as the intricacies of adoption and immigration, Sekaran offers up a story that forces the reader to consider the vicissitudes of chance itself—accidents of our circumstances that we don’t wish to acknowledge but that define our fates, while we insist we are the ones in control.