Book

The covenant of water / Abraham Verghese.

ISBN: 9780802162175 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0802162177 (hardcover)
Physical Description: 724 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.
Edition: First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.
Publisher: New York : Grove Press, 2023.
Copyright: &copy;2023

Verghese, Abraham, 1955- (author.).

Summary:

A stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning-- and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl-- and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi-- will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants. A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.