First published 2017
At five years old, Saroo becomes separated from his family and boards the wrong train in India. He cannot tell anyone his family's name or his hometown. The train carries him hundreds of miles to Kolkata, where he survives alone on the streets for weeks. An orphanage takes him in, and an Australian couple adopts him. Saroo grows up happy with his new family but never stops thinking about his origins. As a young adult, he discovers Google Earth and begins searching satellite images of India for familiar landmarks. He spends years examining the countryside, looking for places that match his childhood memories. One day he spots something he recognizes and realizes he has found his lost home. Saroo travels back to India to search for his birth mother, carrying only fragments of memory from decades before.
Genres: adventure, autobiography, biography-memoir, adoption
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, search-for-identity
Setting: Australia, India, Kolkata
Period: 21st-century
272 pages · Paperback · Viking Books for Young Readers