The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel [Paperback]

A winning, irreverent debut novel about a family wrestling with its future and its past—for readers of J. Courtney Sullivan, Meg Wolitzer, Mona Simpson, and Jhumpa Lahiri

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYTHE BOSTON GLOBE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, BUSTLE,AND EMILY GOULD,THE MILLIONS

With depth, heart, and agility, debut novelist Mira Jacob takes us on a deftly plotted journey that ranges from 1970s India to suburban 1980s New Mexico to Seattle during the dot.com boom.The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancingis an epic, irreverent testimony to the bonds of love, the pull of hope, and the power of making peace with life’s uncertainties.

Celebrated brain surgeon Thomas Eapen has been sitting on his porch, talking to dead relatives. At least that is the story his wife, Kamala, prone to exaggeration, tells their daughter, Amina, a photographer living in Seattle.

Reluctantly Amina returns home and finds a situation that is far more complicated than her mother let on, with roots in a trip the family, including Amina’s rebellious brother Akhil, took to India twenty years earlier. Confronted by Thomas’s unwillingness to explain himself, strange looks from the hospital staff, and a series of puzzling items buried in her mother’s garden, Amina soon realizes that the only way she can help her father is by coming to terms with her family’s painful past. In doing so, she must reckon with the ghosts that haunt all of the Eapens.

Praise forThe Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing

“With wit and a rich understanding of human foibles, Jacob unspools a story that will touch your heart.”—People

“Optimistic, unpretentious and refreshingly witty.”—Associated Press

“By turns hilarious and tender and always attuned to shifts of emotion . . . [Jacob’s] characters shimmlă+