"In this debut novel, a young Indian-American woman comes to an awareness of her family, her community and the extent to which her fate rests in her own hands. It's 1976 and Jeeto Rai is a high-school junior in Oak Grove, in central California's orchard region. Her older sister, Neelam, has recently married a man her parents chose for her. Neelam's real passion, however, is for Hari, grandson of community pillar Mohta Singh who was sent away when his tryst with Neelam, and her resulting pregnancy, was discovered. Mindful of her sister's fate, Jeeto cautiously picks her way through her own forbidden desire for local bad boy Pritam. Also unknown to her parents, Jeeto is accepted at Berkeley, but the tug of history and tradition complicates her longing to leave Oak Grove. Similarly, her own looming arranged marriage both intrigues and scares her. As a first-person narrator, Jeeto functions largely as an observer of Oak Grove's Sikh community?non-Indians, goras, figure only peripherally in Jeeto's world?and its sometimes inscrutable mores. There are lots of kameezes and chunis and people named Singh who aren't necessarily related . . . Chapters that flash back to Jeeto's uncle's arrival in the United States and his own ill-fated love for a Mexican waitress provide the book's most compelling narrative motion."?Kirkus Reviews

"Backhaus situates this debut novel in Oak Grove, CA, in the mid-1970s. The story centers on Jeeto Rai, the youngest teenage daughter in a traditional Sikh family who faces the strong likelihood of an arranged marriage. Though her sister Neelam has recently wed according to custom, Jeeto longs to find love in her future marriage and perhaps attend college. Neelam's scandalous affair with Hari, who was not selected by their parents or the local matchmaker, only fortifies their mother's efforts to marry Jeeto to someone more appropriate than handsome Pritam. As a historical parallel to this coming-of-age story, Backhaus introduces the chronicle of Jeeto's uncle Avtar, one of the first Indian immigrants to settle in Oak Grove in the 1940s. Avtar has established strong roots and plays a major role in events that affect future family affairs . . . Backhaus's beautiful prose makes this book a welcome addition to other Indian American voices. Like Jhumpa Lahiri in Interpreter of Maladies, Backhaus has excelled at depicting the tension that immigrants and first-generation progeny often experience when tradition clashes with Western ways. Recommended."?Faye A. Chadwell, Library Journal

"This lovely debut novel takes place in California's Central Valley in the late 1970s. Jeeta Rai is the younger daughter of a Punjabi family living among the orchards of Oak Grove, where her uncle Avtar acquired land some 30 years earlier. She grows up between the American and Indian worlds and learns about the perils of balancing love with family tradition through three different love stories: her own, her sister Neelam's, and Avtar's. As the story opens, Neelam is being hurriedly married off to a promising young man from India, despite the fact that she is in love with a local boy. As Jeeta helps Avtar plan a festival commemorating the founding of the first local gurdwara (Sikh place of worship), she learns about his lost first love and how he came to be married to her Aunt Teji. Jeeta has a crush on Pritam, the son of the local matchmaker, but her feelings for him conflict with her family's desires and her own desire to attend the University of California at Berkeley. These stories merge seamlessly into a portrait of a family maintaining its own culture while blending into a new one."?Sarah Flowers, formerly at Santa Clara County Library, California, School Library Journal

"Backhaus's debut novel explores love, loss and the tangled web of family in the matriarchal Oak Grove, Calif., Sikh community of 1976. Teenage narrator Jeeto is already caught between two worlds, the college-bound crowd of her American classmates and the traditional marriage, arranged by her mother, to an unknown young man from India. Through Jeeto's conflict, Backhaus explores the tension between the traditional and the new in her sister, relatives and neighbors. Uncle Avtar, who fled India for a life of opportunity, loses his heart to an American waitress, but finds his loyalty to the Sikh community pulling him back into the fold. Jeeto's sister, Neelam, in love with a young man of undesirable parentage, passively accepts her arranged marriage to a stranger, while Jeeto's friend Surinder openly rebels against community mores. Intertwined, their stories of loss, connection and the search for identity create a rich, sensuous portrait of a culture in transition."?Publishers Weekly