A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl
Book summary
An instant USA Today Bestseller. An Apple Best Books (Debut), March 2025. Lilly's Library pick for August 2025 and a Read Caribbean 2025 pick. NIEA winner for multicultural fiction. A girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layer upon layer of secrets, until one morning years later when she is forced to reckon with her past. "This debut is a beautiful, if sometimes harrowing, exploration of one woman’s journey. . . to a life built by her own grit and determination." -Library Journal, Starred Review. "A coming-of-age story that is at once shocking and necessary. . . the story is too important and gripping to put down." - Kirkus "A powerful story of resilience and reinvention... this satisfies." - Publisher's Weekly On an ordinary day in an upscale Atlanta suburb, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating question: Who is Sunny? Maya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana—a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build. As she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the harrowing details of her past—her journey to America on the “backtrack,” the shock of being delivered into the hands of an abusive family while being severed from her own, and her many evolutions of self as she struggles to find a path forward against all odds. Steeped in sensory detail, this striking debut transports the reader from the sugar cane fields of Guyana to the world of immigrant laborers in Miami to the affluent suburbs of Atlanta. Nanda Reddy takes us on a wrenching journey of assimilation, survival, and reinvention that explores the very construct of identity—all the while underscoring the strength of chosen family, love, and the resilience of the human spirit.