The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese from Penguin Random House
From the NYT best-selling author of Cutting for Stone, this saga spanning seven-plus decades is another masterpiece. I waited almost a year after it was available until finding the perfect time to savor all 736 pages, and I did not want it to end.
The novel begins in the year 1900 with 12-year-old Mariama traveling from one coast of South India to the other to wed a 40-year-old widower in an arranged marriage. The man, Big Appachen, owns and runs Parembil, his Malabar Coast home and estate, a 500-acre property surrounded by water. He is appalled when he discovers that Mariama is just a child and their immediate future is rearranged so that she will grow up in his house caring for his young son, Jojo, learning to cook and keep house as a cherished member of the family. As she comes of age, Mariama earns the honorific of Big Ammachi and celebrates the births of a daughter and later a son. She also learns of her husband’s curse: “the Condition” that afflicts a member of each generation is death involving water. Parembil is in a land of water. Tragedy inevitably does strike Big Ammachi’s family.
In 1919 Glasgow, Scotland, young Digby Kilgour struggles to support his mother and aspires to become a doctor. Upon completing his studies, and after his mother’s death, he joins the Indian Medical Services. Through his medical tenure in Madras he builds associations with members of the Royal Service, other British ex-pat families, and importantly, a Swedish doctor who is an eminent researcher treating victims of leprosy and also founded a safe community for lepers. Through a tenuous connection he is eventually involved with a cherished member of Big Ammachi’s family.
The parallel stories continue through historically atmospheric generations of world wars; British Raj and the end of British Rule in 1947; Naxalite insurgency; and the surging growth of Big Ammachi’s estate, township, political prowess and family. As her granddaughter, Mariamma, questions her heritage, a revelation ties the stories together.
Mystical threads weave throughout the author’s meticulously chronicled history; technical medical research; and sociological accuracy. Big Ammachi intuits something in her daughter, who is never named other than Baby Mol (baby girl). Her husband’s dead wife’s spirit lives in the basement. The elephant, Damodaran, is a protective family member. Charming and eerily prescient – this is writing at its best.
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