Release
date: May 11, 2021
Win 1 of 5 copies of this coming-of-age memoir about losing a mother to a guru and what happens when the person your life revolves around can't stay.
Win 1 of 5 copies of this coming-of-age memoir about losing a mother to a guru and what happens when the person your life revolves around can't stay.
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Ronit was six years old when her mother left her and her four-year-old sister for India to follow a guru. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose commune was re
Ronit was six years old when her mother left her and her four-year-old sister for India to follow a guru. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose commune was responsible for the largest biological attack on U.S. soil, preached that children were hindrances and encouraged sterilizations among his followers. Luckily Ronit's father, who'd left the family the previous year, stepped up and brought the girls to live with him first in Newark, New Jersey, and later in Flushing, Queens. On the surface, his nurturing was the balm Ronit sought, but she soon paid a second emotional price, taking on the role of partner and confidant to him, and substitute mother to her sister. By the end of her childhood, Ronit would discover she had lost her mother and the close and trusting relationship she once had with her father. Though they have now reconciled, for years she grappled with the toll her mother's leaving took, measuring her self-worth and capacity for love by that absence.