Abstract
Thambi Navaratnam is a young Tamil living with his mother and brother in Scarborough. He wholeheartedly intends to avoid the fate of his brother: arranged marriage. But it’s all anyone can talk about. Marriage… marriage… marriage. To add fuel to the fire, his father, who has been separated from their family for more than 25 years is finally escaping Sri Lanka and coming to Toronto. The problem: none of them know that Thambi has been seeing a white woman who wants nothing more than what she has. The pressure only builds from there as the days toward the wedding count down. A first in Canadian fiction, The Panic Button is a heartfelt story, cut to the bone and told with verve, about the pains and pleasures of immigrant Tamil life.