Louisiana Catch
Sweta Srivastava Vikram
Modern History Press, April 2018
ISBN 978-1-61599-342-9
Trade Paperback
From the publisher:
A grieving daughter and abuse survivor must summon the courage to run a feminist conference, trust a man she meets over the Internet, and escape a catfishing stalker to find her power.
Ahana, a wealthy thirty-three-year-old New Delhi woman, flees the pain of her mother’s death, and her dark past, by accepting a huge project in New Orleans, where she’ll coordinate an annual conference to raise awareness of violence against women. Her half-Indian, half-Irish colleague and public relations guru, Rohan Brady, who helps Ahana develop her online presence, offends her prim sensibilities with his raunchy humor. She is convinced that he’s a womanizer.
Meanwhile, she seeks relief from her pain in an online support group, where she makes a good friend: the mercurial Jay Dubois, who is also grieving the loss of his mother. Louisiana Catch is an emotionally immersive novel about identity, shame, and who we project ourselves to be in the world. It’s a book about Ahana’s unreliable instincts and her ongoing battle to determine whom to place her trust in as she, Rohan, and Jay shed layers of their identities.
This book is a thoughtful contribution to the examination of a couple of societal issues, one as old as time, domestic violence, and one quite recent, online deception. Savage men have used the women in their lives as punching bags throughout history. These women have been coerced to remain in a vicious and often fatal environment by economic and societal factors, leading lives of abject misery and raising children who believe brutality at home is the way everyone lives, thereby perpetuating the cycle of fear and hurt into the next generations.
Internet friendship, on the other hand, is something our grandmothers never had to cope with. Social interactions were generally limited to individuals known by family and friends so misrepresentation by anyone was unlikely. As countless people have learned the hard way during the past 20 years, it is possible, if not downright simple, to create a credible fictional persona on the Internet that stands up to superficial investigation. Ahana’s naivete about both of the men she meets on the Internet is not new.
This book offers a view into daily Indian life and customs that helps foreigners like me understand the country and its people a bit more. The book’s action is spread across New Delhi and New York and New Orleans, three lively but quite different cities. All of the characters, from the protagonist to the bit players, of which there are many, felt authentic and none of them seemed to blend into each other. The ending is predictable but I enjoyed watching Ahana find her sense of self and a new direction for her life.
Prospective readers need to know that sexual abuse is described in a matter-of-fact but graphic manner. Some sections may be difficult to read.
Reviewed by Aubrey Hamilton, March 2018.
About the Author:
Sweta Srivastava Vikram (www.swetavikram.com), featured by Asian Fusion as “one of the most influential Asians of our time,” is an award-winning author of eleven books, five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, mindfulness writing coach, wellness columnist, global speaker, and certified yoga and Ayurveda holistic health counselor. Sweta’s work has appeared in The New York Times and other publications across nine countries on three continents. Louisiana Catch (Modern History Press) is her debut US novel. Born in India, Sweta spent her formative years between the Indian Himalayas, North Africa, and the United States collecting and sharing stories. A graduate of Columbia University, she also teaches the power of yoga, Ayurveda, and mindful living to female trauma survivors, writers and artists, busy women, entrepreneurs, and business professionals in her avatar as the CEO-Founder of NimmiLife (www.nimmilife.com). She also uses her holistic wellness training to combine creative writing strategies with Ayurveda and yoga to help poets and writers improve their writing. She lives in Queens, New York, with her husband, Anudit.
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