SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS

Hindu epic meets high school drama.

A mock trial becomes intensely personal for Indian American sophomore Siya Kumar when the case her team is working on is eerily similar to the circumstances of her lawyer mother’s death. She has a budding crush on good-looking Rajiv Raghavan, school all-star and co-head of the mock trial team, but things get even more complicated when truths become mired in controversies, secrets, and distrust, obscuring Siya’s foundational relationships and memories. Still, the aspiring attorney holds on to her mother’s belief in telling the truth. The story becomes entwined with that of the goddess Sita from the Ramayana. Siya’s mother loved Sita, the wife of Rama, even giving her daughter one of her many names. (Raj, coincidentally, was named after Rama.) Siya’s English teacher encourages her to consider depictions of women, and she reflects on what it takes to tell the truth, and how Sita’s “story ends with loss…not because she couldn’t prove herself a truth-teller, but despite the fact that she did.” The book questions privilege, social media fallout, and bitter rivalries, but it also tenderly portrays grief and its aftermath, as the Kumars navigate changes, including Siya’s college-aged sister Asha’s disapproval of their father’s dating the widowed Aparna Auntie. In her YA debut, LaRocca weaves a gripping narrative with sharply etched characters, a tightly written plot, and emotional highs and lows.

A sweeping, heartfelt read that celebrates the power of truth.