Seetha Kandik

Included for this post is a content warning for, suicide, mental illness, death, racism, physical, substance and non-graphic sexual abuse. 1) Indira Nowak demands her dying mother fill in memory gaps of childhood abuse before it’s too late. 2) In a nearby hospital, 74-year-old Petra transitions from sickbed to deathbed, having secretly terminated her lifesaving heart medication. Once a hospice nurse, Petra blew up her reputation by suing her employer into bankruptcy for gender, age, and reverse discrimination. Left a pariah in hospice nursing, Petra fears she’ll be mistreated at home. But even at the hospital Petra can’t escape her destructive temper. While Petra is ready to die, she wants an exit surrounded by loved ones with her at the center. 3) MEMORABLE or BAD ENOUGH 4) Genre - Women’s Fiction. My novel blends the themes of filial obligation gone too far in Kirthana Ramisetti’s DAVA SHASTRI’S LAST DAY with the trauma rollercoaster in MY DARK VANESSA by Kate Elizabeth Russell. 5) What happens when an abusive past that’s bad enough to estrange a daughter from her mother becomes what forces them together. Can both women agree on one truth and find forgiveness even if it makes one of them a liar? 6) Internal Conflict: Plagued by incomplete memories of childhood sexual abuse, Indira demands Petra apologize for a lifetime of minimizing what happened. Petra refuses, claiming Indira thwarted her father’s manic advances and wasn’t a real victim. After a lifetime of being called a liar Indira struggles with trusting herself. Even though she’s overcome addiction and excelled in her career, she fears that poking around in her incomplete past will destroy her sanity in the present. Indira has mastered keeping secrets from not only her family and friends but also her husband. Because of this she struggles with what being honest with herself and others looks like. External Conflict: Indira Nowak is angry at her slimy boss for groping her at the holiday party. Her revenge plan to steal his role and be VP before forty is humming along. An unexpected call from her estranged dying mother, Petra Subramanian threatens to derail her plans. Indira thought she’d left her past in the past, but she’s wrong. 7) BAD ENOUGH is written in dual POV and Timeline. Set in March of 2016, the readers meet Indira on the Northside of Chicago working out of her brown Mercedes. Petra’s chapter begins at Lakeside Hospital in the neighboring suburb Evanston Illinois. An affluent hospital, Lakeside is where most of the nurses and administrators Petra has sued now work. It is also the hospital where her ex-husband died twenty years earlier. Petra has lost her wealth so she can no longer afford to buy the care she needs where she lives, still the administrators are trying to send her home to die. Petra resides in the 1950s shoebox of a house, where she raised Indira. A compulsive shopper she’s stuffed it with a hoard of goods and a non-house-broken mini schnauzer she struggles to care for. Indira shares a sterile loft condo on the Northside of Chicago with her supportive husband Will. There Indira feels in control of her hard-won sobriety and OCD with Will by her side. They have two well trained rescue mutts that magically don’t destroy the house. Indira’s life there is orderly and controlled. The story flashes back to Indira’s youth in her childhood home in Skokie and the Lakeside Hospital where her father passed away. In the past Petra had clout at Lakeside and used it to expedite his death. Because of this, Petra believes she’ll be able to do the same for herself in the present.