The Orphan Keeper

Little did I know that I'd go on a Camron Wright rage after reading Letters for Emily, hmm, was it just last week? I'd posted about Letters for Emily, a friend asked to borrow it and offered to loan me her copy of the The Orphan Keeper in return.

This is a fictionalized version of a true story about a young, poor, Indian boy who was kidnapped, sold to an orphanage and eventually adopted by an American family.

Born Chellamuthu, the boy's name was changed to Taj, an easier name for his American family and classmates to pronounce. And for most of his life, he felt like he didn't belong. He looked Indian, but he was American. He was the only dark face in his community growing up.

Unsure about what he wanted to do after high school, a guidance counselor suggests that Taj might want to attend a study abroad program to help him get his head on straight. That starts Taj's real journey into discovering who he really is, where did he come from and what of his family in India.

I don't think that any novelist could have come up with such a story if it wasn't an actual story. In this case, truth is definitely much stranger than fiction. Wright took the most pertinent events in Taj's life and condensed them into a highly readable story. I gave this 5 stars on goodreads.com.

As I was finishing up The Orphan Keeper, with tears in my eyes, I got an email that Wright's most recent novel, The Rent Collector, is available for me as an e-book right now. I look forward to reading it.