"It is hard for Veena Dinavahi to live while her classmates keep dying. The high-achieving daughter of loving Indian immigrants, Veena lives in a typical white American suburb-except for its unusually high suicide rate. She tries to manage her mental health in all the right ways, but nothing works. Then, on one late-night Google search, her mom finds Bob Lyon-a 60-year-old man in the backwoods of Georgia who says he can make Veena want to live again. He calls himself "The True Happiness Company" and, as their relationship progresses... 'Daddy.' As Veena is sucked into his strangely close-knit community, Bob's 'suggestions' start to feel less and less optional. Before she knows it, she's a college dropout, married mother of three, and a Mormon convert who has gotten way too good at dismissing her gut feeling that something is wrong. But when Bob finally pushes her too far, Veena slowly begins to realize that true happiness cannot be one-size-fits-all. She cuts ties with Bob, only to reckon with what it means to build a life outside of his influence. Driven to understand her journey, she re-enrolls in college, where studying psychology proves revelatory as she considers her experience through the broader contexts of gender, race, religion. Told with unflinching clarity and shot through with incisive wit, The True Happiness Company is Dinavahi's singular debut about losing and reclaiming your identity, rethinking mental illness, and learning to trust your intuition in a world determined to annihilate it"-- Provided by publisher.
|
