In a village in India a daughter is born, a daughter is given away and a life is saved.  A daughter is adopted and raised in the United States. Later this daughter, Asha, returns to India to reconnect with her adopted family and to find her birth mother.  Writer Shilpi Somaya Gowda tells how she came to write Secret Daughter:

Room by Emma Donoghue is told from the point-of-view of five-year-old Jack, who lives in Room with his beloved Ma.  Every object in Room, such as Lamp and Floor, has a name because it is so important to Jack.  But it gradually becomes clear to the reader that Jack and Ma are really prisoners and that Jack's well-loved Room is a prison created from a fortified shed by Old Nick who kidnapped Ma and is Jack's biological father.

I admired how Ma tries to teach Jack using whatever is available and tries to keep him happy and healthy and protected in spite of their circumstances.  But gradually the true nature of their situation has to be revealed by Ma to Jack.  His profound disorientation when he comes in contact with the outside world and other people is beautifully conveyed.

This novel stayed in my head as I struggled with what I would have done in such dire circumstances and how I would react to Ma and Jack in order to help them on the "outside."

The plot of Room is similar in plot to Still Missing by Chevy Stevens, but quite different in tone.  Room is not a thriller, although it has some pulse-pounding parts, and is not as graphic as Still Missing; rather, Room is the story of a woman's desperate attempts to save her little boy and herself.