Review of Under the Lemon Trees by Bhira Backhaus

Under the Lemon Trees, set in the small Northern California town of Oak Grove in the Sikh immigrant community, moves between 1976 and 1947 to tell the story of love and finding one’s way in a world that seems at times both too big and too limited. The novel focuses primarily on Jeeto, a teenage girl trying to find the balance between her parents’ traditional vision of what her life should be and the ill-conceived dreams that tug at her. Hers is a classic coming-of-age tale set within the Indian immigrant community. In counterpoint to Jeeto’s struggles, Backhaus recounts the older story of her uncle, the first in the family to immigrate to America. His tale gradually unfolds of love lost and dreams mangled and kept hidden, making us re-evaluate the more expected experiences of Jeeto and her sister Neelam.

Backhaus excels at lush description—the orchards and river, the food, the silk kameezes and veils of the women, the emotional nuances of fearful mothers, baffled fathers, angry teens. She brings alive this very particular place and time. An especially effective moment for me was when Neelam is grating carrots and does not feel that she is scraping her knuckles—she feels nothing inside or out and realizes at that moment when she sees her blood, she must act and reclaim her ability to love.

Jeeto, along with her siblings and friends, uncomfortably straddles the ambiguities that taunt her generation, one that has grown up in America but whose parents still see their children as living by the rules of the rural Indian villages. The boundaries for women in the insular Sikh community seem far too constrained, and yet the opportunities outside her parents’ world seem far too frightening. Jeeto must find a balance between them, tumbling repeatedly but finding the support and the inner strength to step out bravely again.