Fifteen-year-old Fawad has big dreams about being the world's first
Pakistani to be drafted into the NBA. A first-generation Pakistani
coming-of-age story for fans of David Yoon and Ben Philippe.
Fifteen-year-old Fawad Chaudhry loves two things: basketball and his
mother's potato and ground beef stuffed parathas. Both are round and
both help him forget about things like his father, who died two years
ago, his mother's desire to arrange a marriage to his first cousin,
Nusrat, back home in Pakistan, and the tiny apartment in Regent Park he
shares with his mom and sister. Not to mention his estranged best friend
Yousuf, who's coping with the shooting death of his older brother.
But Fawad has plans: like, asking out Ashley, even though she lives on
the other, wealthier side of the tracks, and saving his friend Arif from
being beaten into a pulp for being the school flirt, and making the
school basketball team and dreaming of being the world's first Pakistani
to be drafted into the NBA. All he has to do now is convince his mother
to let him try out for the basketball team. And let him date girls from
his school. Not to mention somehow get Omar, the neighborhood bully, to
leave him alone . . .