THE RUMMY CLUB

The Rummy Club is Joy Luck Club with an Indian cultural twist and centers upon the protagonist Divya's cross-country move from a New York immigrant community to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she reunites with three of her closest boarding school friends (now all conveniently living in California) and starts a weekly get-together revolving around the popular Indian game Rummy. The women meet in each others' homes and share food, gossip, and confidences; but what begins as a casual pursuit of connections based on past familiarity becomes something more because each woman is experiencing a personal crisis in her life—and it spills over into the group's social setting.

The Rummy Club is a contemporary women's novel about the intertwined fates of four women from India. They met in their teen years at an all-girls boarding high school, nestled in the Himalayas. Now in their 40's, the lives of Mini, Divya, Alka, and Priya have brought each of them to the SF Bay Area. Sharing secrets since their teenage years, they reunite and gather weekly to play the Indianized version of rummy. The novel provides a snapshot of the Indian diaspora in the context of 21st-century America. 
 Now the friends' lives are all in crisis. Brilliant Alka's abandoned ambitions and her dissatisfying marriage have turned her into an obsessive Tiger Mother. Big-hearted Priya must face the truth about her collapsing marriage. Divya herself lies awake at night struggling with her envy of the comfortable stability her friends have already attained. And, in one unexpected moment, beautiful Mini suddenly becomes a widow and begins dating a white guy. When Alka's son meets with an accident and Divya's frustrated longing for the American Dream spills over into the rummy game, their once dependable world is torn apart. Will Alka's son make it? Will Alka and Divya repair their friendship? Will Priya's fledgling business and her blossoming relationship with a Hispanic hunk survive? Will Mini marry a WASP? Will the four friends ever play Rummy together again?

Born and raised in New Delhi, Anoop Judge now resides in the Bay Area. She is the author of four novels, THE RUMMY CLUB which won the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award, THE AWAKENING OF MEENA RAWAT, an excerpt of which was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize, NO ORDINARY THURSDAY which was released on August 2, 2022, and MERCY AND GRACE which releases on September 19, 2023. She earned an MFA from St. Mary's College of California and was the recipient of the 2021 Advisory Board Award and the 2023 Alumni Scholarship. Anoop teaches fiction writing at Stanford University. She lives in Pleasanton, California, and is the mother of nearly grown and fully admirable children.