In November 1989, an Indian couple are discovered murdered in a small town in up
state New York. They lie together as though just disengaged from a long embrace.
Yet their murder has been two centuries in the making.
County Sligo, Ireland
, 1843. Seventeen-year-old Brendan McCarthaigh and his best friend Padraig have
everything ahead of them. Quiet Brendan is in love with books and headstrong, sp
irited Padraig is madly in love with black-haired Brigid.
But when the sancti
monious Father Conlon discovers Padraig and Brigid's clandestine affair, he sets
in motion a chain of unforeseeable, irrevocable events that will propel one to
North America and the other to Bengal. Weaving together private histories and re
al events, and taking us on a journey across the globe - Kalyan Ray has crafted
a sweeping, epic, multigenerational saga spanning two centuries. A rich, compell
ing tale of home and exile, identity and hybridity, it is also a story of oppres
sion, friendship and compassion, and the few intimate degrees of separation that
lie between love and murder.
