In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments--caught between
past and present, home and abroad, tradition, and fresh experience. A
widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to
a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are
deemed superfluous in the award-winning "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter." In
"The Intelligence of Wild Things," a woman from Sacramento visits her
brother in Vermont to inform him that back in Calcutta their mother is
dying. And in the title story, a painter looks to ancient myth and the
example of her grandmother for help in navigating her first real crisis
of faith.
Knowing, compassionate and expertly rendered, the stories in The
Unknown Errors of Our Lives depict the eternal struggle to find a
balance between the pull of home and the allure of change.