Book summary

Beigh Masters, descended from the Puritans, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with an Indian computer scientist named Venn. She comes across the records of an ancestor, Hannah Easton, who was raised in Salem, married an Englishman, traveled with her husband to India, and became mistress to a Raja.

Media reviews

"If it seems implausible, without the scaffolding of the whole tale, that a Puritan girl from Salem--still less a devout one--should, as a woman, become the concupiscent lover of a Gentoo prince, I can only say that Ms. Mukherjee knows how to make it work....The truth is in the details, brilliantly conceived, finely written, sustained from the first to the last page."