Janeane speaks to Alka Joshi about her debut novel, THE HENNA ARTIST

A touching tribute to the life her mother didn’t have the opportunity to lead, Alka Joshi’s debut novel, THE HENNA ARTIST (MIRA Books; March 3, 2020; $26.99) is set in post-Raj 1950s Jaipur, about a young woman struggling to shape her own destiny in a world pivoting between the traditional and the modern. With her novel, Alka reimagines what life might have been like if her mother hadn’t been in an arranged marriage at 18 and instead been able to pursue the same independence and education that she always advocated for Alka. After fleeing an arranged marriage as a fifteen-year-old to an abusive older man, Lakshmi Shastri steals away alone from her rural village to Jaipur. Against all odds, she carves out a living for herself as a henna artist, friend, and confidante to wealthy, upper caste women. She shares her knowledge and keeps their secrets in a delicate balancing act amid the changing 1950s social mores brought about by Indian Independence. But on the day her ex-husband arrives in town, all that Lakshmi has built threatens to unravel. He seeks money and brings with him a girl, a sister Lakshmi never knew she had and suddenly the caution that Lakshmi has carefully cultivated is threatened, along with her livelihood. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does. Alka Joshi is a graduate of Stanford University and received her M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts. She has worked as an advertising copywriter, a marketing consultant, and an illustrator. Alka was born in India, in the state of Rajasthan. Her family came to the United States when she was nine, and she now lives on California's Monterey Peninsula with her husband and two misbehaving pups. The Henna Artist is her first novel.