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The next Summit Avenue Book Readers is Tuesday, April 11.  The book is Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (scroll down to see a description).  Discussion will be led by Joanne McKim. 

Contact Julie Ditzler for more information.

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
by Katherine Boo

(Source: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Beautiful-Forevers-Mumbai-undercity-ebook/dp/B004J4X7JO/)
In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.

As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,” might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.”

~Discussion led by Joanne McKim

2022-2023 Book List

September 2022
The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness by Gregory Boyle

October 2022
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

November 2022
The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

January 2023
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

February 2023
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

March 2023
Jefferson’s Daughters by Catherine Kerrison

April 2023
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo