Side Streams

Side Streams is an intergenerational family novel set principally in Northern California, with significant sections in Bahrain and Lahore. It follows Filipino American, Pakistani American and queer families whose lives become entangled through friendship, marriage, adultery, migration and the preservation of an unfinished mural. At its centre are Isobel and Claudia, childhood friends whose relationship survives decades of separation and betrayal; their daughters Aliya and Pilar; and the Qazi siblings Samir, Malik and Pilar, who must decide whether biology alone is enough to make them a family.

The story begins in the early 2000s, when Isobel drives from Cupertino to Vacaville with her twelve-year-old daughter Aliya. Isobel’s oldest friend Claudia has called for help after the collapse of another relationship with an unavailable man. Isobel treats the journey as an emergency, hurrying past Aliya’s requests to stop for a bathroom because she is determined to reach Claudia on time.

They first go to Tina’s Buffet and Grocery, a Filipino restaurant where Isobel and Claudia worked together as teenagers. Tina, Claudia’s older relative and the community’s formidable unofficial matriarch, immediately recognises Isobel despite the haircut Isobel hoped would disguise her. Their reunion is hostile. Isobel resents Tina because she believes Tina has always encouraged Claudia to remain dependent upon Vacaville, while Tina sees Isobel as someone who abandoned both Claudia and the community and then began acting superior to them.