The Namesake; by Jhumpa Lahiri.

The book takes us on a journey with Ashima, the new bride who marries a professor working in New England and leaves her home and family in Calcutta as he did when he went for his studies, for a life with him in the faraway land and making a home there.

The journey is of the life they lead, the couple and their two children, of whom the first child - a son - is a major character, and it tells how they made a life, with an expatriot sensibility, with the parents striding two worlds and the children dealing with the legacy, trying to keep in step with both, with mixed success.

The main beauty is how much it all rings true, for those that have experienced any of it - the first generation immigrants, those that live there for a while and prefer for one reason or another to return at some point, and the second generation that is born and brought up in US and has a dual identity. Most of this is true for NRI (Non Resident Indians) population in other countries to some extent, depending on times and economic circumstances.

In more than one way this is reminiscent of Rumer Godden's River.