Guest Post & Giveaway: The Lost Photograph by Archana Maniar
Book Details:
Genre: Historical Fiction with Contemporary Themes
Published by: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
Number of Pages: 399
ISBN: 9781662528729 (ISBN10: 1662528728)
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A forgotten photograph. A trailblazing ancestor. And a modern woman about to discover that her family’s past holds the key to her future.
When overworked surgeon Jaanvi Chowdhury finds a mysterious photograph and a small stack of letters hidden in her Boston attic, she uncovers the remarkable story of her great-aunt Kalyani Joshi―one of the first Indian women to study medicine in 1920s London.
As Jaanvi pieces together her ancestor’s life, she discovers Kalyani’s experience of colonial oppression, her role in India’s fight for independence, and her unlikely connection with a Scottish missionary’s son, Alexander. Drawn together by their passion for literature, Kalyani and Alexander will risk everything for a free India, putting their loyalty, love, and choices to the test.
Navigating between past and present, Jaanvi confronts her own struggles. Passed over for promotion, she has lost sight of why she became a doctor. But as she learns how fiercely Kalyani fought for each opportunity―and the price she paid―Jaanvi begins to question her own carefully constructed life. Can her great-aunt’s unprecedented story help her reclaim not just her purpose in medicine but her sense of who she truly is?
A sweeping and captivating historical novel that will steal a piece of your heart, The Lost Photograph is perfect for fans of Alka Joshi, Kate Quinn, and Kristin Hannah.
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When my kids were little, we used to pass an old house every morning on our way to school. An old ranch-style house lost among even older Victorians, the windows of the little dwelling were covered with overgrown bushes that gave it a sense of mystery. Glancing at it through the car window day after day over the course of many years, we concocted an entire story about the house: who lived in it (a slight gray-haired woman named Verna) and what she used to get around town (a beach cruiser with a giant blow horn on it) and with who (her shaggy little dog who sat in the basket of the bicycle each time she rode around town). With each telling, the story became more elaborate. The kids have long since graduated from that school, but on the rare occasion we pass the house, we all still reminisce about Verna.
I hadn’t quite started writing books back then but reflecting on it now, weeks after the publication of my second novel, The Lost Photograph, it all makes sense. I am by no means a voyeur (really, NOT a voyeur) but I do have an odd obsession with the stories that take place behind the facades of old buildings like Verna’s old ranch-style house. Maybe that’s one reason why I write historical fiction. It is an opportunity to imagine what grizzled old structures might have looked like when they were grand and full of promise, a chance to recreate the dramas that might have unfolded there long ago.
In The Lost Photograph, I immerse the reader in the bustle of 1930s Bombay (now Mumbai). It helps that I lived in the city as a child, and even after I moved back to the US, I have continued to go back for visits. Whether a resident or visitor, I am endlessly awed by the colonial-era buildings – Victoria terminus and The Gateway of India and The Bombay High Court – their unique combination of Gothic European and Mughal Indian motifs capturing my imagination since I was a kid. And since I can remember, I have been curious about the history that once unfolded behind their ornate facades and under their grand domes. That is the world I recreate in The Lost Photograph – a world in which Indians are actively resisting British colonial oppression during clandestine meetings in brand new Art Deco buildings –– in which sari-clad women are emerging from demarcated lives and spilling into the crowded streets of Old Bombay to fight for the freedom of both their country and themselves – a world in which, a Scottish missionary’s son first falls in love with an Indian girl in an ornate mansion overlooking the Arabian Sea.
Born near Chicago to immigrants from India, Archana Maniar relocated with her parents to Mumbai at age four. After the culture shock abated, she fell in love with her parents’ homeland until chance brought the family to California. During vacations and family occasions, Mumbai was a frequent destination. She attended college at University of California, Los Angeles where she studied political theory and biology before attending medical school at the University of California, Davis. As a professor of medicine and practicing infectious diseases physician, she was a frontline healthcare worker from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and was deeply involved in health system pandemic preparedness. Always a writer in the margins of her day, storytelling became an obsession during her medical career, a way to process her observations about human nature during health, stress, and sickness. With a stubborn case of wanderlust, when she is not working or writing, she is usually traveling somewhere with her family. The Lost Photograph is her second novel.
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I love this. Wow, so interesting! "sari-clad women are emerging from demarcated lives and spilling into the crowded streets of Old Bombay to fight for the freedom of both their country and themselves" ~ This sounds amazing!
Thanks so much for sharing!