Someone You Love Is Gone - by Gurjinder Basran (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A beautiful, haunting story of one family, spanning generations and continents, as they face life's inevitable losses, struggle with grief and reach for redemption."

--Shilpi Somaya Gowda, New York Times bestselling author of Secret Daughter and The Golden Son

Perfect for readers of Jhumpa Lahiri and Anne Tyler, Someone You Love Is Gone is a beautifully rendered, multi-generational story of secrets and ghosts that haunt a family.

I sit at the table and forget myself for a moment and the past steps forward. The house is as it was before Father died, and even before that, before Diwa left and before Jyoti was born. The house had a different light then or perhaps that's just memory casting a glow on everything, candlelight and sunset, everything only slightly visible. Mother is in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes. Steam is rising and the window in front of her fogs over her reflection. Even here, she is a ghost.

Simran's mother has died but is not gone. Haunted by her mother's spirit and memories of the past, she struggles to make sense of her world. Faced with disillusion in her marriage, growing distance from her daughter and sister, and the return of her long-estranged brother, she is troubled by questions to which she has no answers. As the life Simran has carefully constructed unravels, she must confront the truth of why her brother was separated from the family at a young age, and in doing so she uncovers an ancestral inheritance that changes everything. She allows her grief to transform her life, but in ways that ultimately give her the deep sense of self she has been craving, discovering along the way family secrets that cross continents, generations, and even lifetimes.

Gurjinder Basran's mesmerizingly beautiful novel, Someone You Love Is Gone, is a powerful exploration of loss and love, memory and history, family ties and family secrets, and the thin veil between this life and the next.

From the Back Cover

Haunted by visions of her recently departed mother, Simran is unable to move on. Grappling with the growing estrangement of her sister and daughter as well as the disintegration of her marriage, she wonders how her life has come to this. As the life she has carefully constructed unravels, she is forced to confront one of her most painful childhood memories--her parents sending her younger brother away from home.

Woven throughout are memories of Simran's mother as a young woman in 1960s India. Her world had seemed beautiful and full of hope then. But when an unexpected tragedy occurs, the results will have repercussions for generations to come.

As the ghosts from the past clamor for attention, the only way to put them to rest may be for Simran to dig deeper into her family history and close the circle that was left open when her family was torn apart.

Lyrical and heartbreaking, Someone You Love Is Gone is a mesmerizing tale of enduring love and family ties that defy time and space, weaving together the past and present, crossing continents and spanning generations.

Review Quotes

"A heartfelt story of family and self-exploration to which Basran adds depth with scattered cultural and historical references and a touch of mysticism." -- Booklist

Praise for Everything Was Gone: "A tender novel about identity and the search for belonging that is both humorous and heartbreaking. In Meena, Basran has created a feisty, complicated and irrepressible heroine." -- Thrity Umrigar

"In this brave and beautifully written novel, Gurjinder Basran shines a light into the darkest corners of one family's emotional inheritance. Grief has the power to remake us, and ...it proves truly transformative, blurring the lines between self and other, home and history--even life and death." -- Alissa York, author of Fauna and The Naturalist

"A beautiful, haunting story of one family, spanning generations and continents, as they face life's inevitable losses, struggle with grief and reach for redemption." -- Shilpi Somaya Gowda, New York Times bestselling author of Secret Daughter and The Golden Son