Jasmine is the story of a woman born in a rural Indian village who becomes an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. in the mid-1980s. Raised in a poor village in India, the protagonist finds her worldview challenged and liberated in America, and she assumes different names and identities as she adapts to the changing circumstances in her life. Born the fifth daughter in a poor family who had suffered great losses after the Partition of India in 1947, her prospects are bleak. Cursed by a prophecy an astrologer gave her when she was seven that she would be widowed and exiled, she vows to "reposition the stars" using her own intellect, intuition, and faith.
After her father dies unexpectedly,...