Ganesh

A place to call home…

His real name was Jeffrey Moore, but everyone in the small Indian village called him Ganesh.

Jeffrey liked the nickname — after the elephant-headed Hindu god, the Remover of Obstacles.

He liked the village, too, with its bustling, noisy main street, its temples and shady courtyards and the Mission School to which he and his friend Rama walked each day.

Besides, whilst his parents were American, Jeffrey himself had been born in India and now, at fourteen, he felt like he belonged there.

But living somewhere does not necessarily mean you belong there, as Jeffrey discovers when his father dies and his neighbours begin to look upon him as a foreigner.

With no future for him in India, he begins his journey to America, to start a new life with his aunt.

The small Midwestern town is strange, but Jeffrey soon feels at one with the rambling, three-story house his great-grandfather built with his own hands, surrounded by the echoes of his unfamiliar ancestors.

The new school he has to go to takes more time. The kids in his class aren’t exactly unfriendly, but his entire life in India — Hinduism, yoga, mantras — is totally alien to them.

Feeling like an outsider, Jeffrey wonders if he will ever feel at home, let alone make friends, in this cold, northern land.

However, when the new house he has grown to love, and the aunt who has made it his home, both come under threat, it is his new-found friends, and an ancient Hindu tradition, that Ganesh turns to for help.

From the exotic eastern shores of India to the modernised lands of America in the west, Ganesh is a heart-warming tale of self-discovery and belonging.

Praise for Malcolm Bosse

‘A deeply moving novel of a young boy’s search for roots in two countries.’ – New York Times

Malcolm Joseph Bosse (1926–2002) was an American author of both young adult and adult novels. He was born in Detriot, Michigan, and is a graduate of Yale University. He served in the US Navy and was also an English teacher in City College of New York in Manhattan. His novels are often set in Asia, and have been praised for their cultural and historical information relating to the character's adventures. Bosse mostly wrote historical fiction after the publication of The Warlord, which quickly became a bestseller. He also won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1983.