“Passage West” by Rishi Reddi

Passage West is a rare exploration of the lives of Indian farmworkers in California in the 1900s.

The long history of Indian immigration to California has been a long time fascination for both of us, especially when it comes to how the stories of those 19th and 20th century immigrants shaped the civil rights struggle in both the United States and South Asia.

But despite our years-long interest, neither one of us had read much about this period until we first began diving into Passage West, author Rishi Reddi's debut novel that explores the lives of multiple generations of a Punjabi Sikh community that made their lives and fortunes in the American West.