This debut novel combines alchemy with the background of the Gold Rush. Set in Silicon Valley-era California, with the emotional driver of the identity issues of young members of the close-knit expat Indian community, it delivers a powerful yarn sparkling with all the cultural values of gold.
At that time, I was going to be an Americanist - a professional interpreter of this land and its layers. My speciality was to be late-1800s California, with a focus on the rise of immigration, the ballooning of enterprise, and the economic stratifications that buoyed the nation into the twentieth century. In other words, the aftermath of the gold rush. But these days, staring at the papers piling up on my desk, I couldn't imagine spending decades burrowing into this corner of the past. It didn't help that I stood out in this land of utopian technofuturists, committed as I was to the secular preservationist that is the history academy.
