The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

I very much enjoyed this book--I love a long drawn out book that meanders in a leisurely way towards an ending. These books are like the ballads, they imbue the story with culture and history that leave the reader hoping for more at the end, but also leave you with a satisfaction that you could go on, but you in some ways have also had enough--until next time. The story opens in 1900, and a 12-year-old girl takes a boat to get married to a 40-year-old widower. She goes on to become Big Ammachi, the matriarch of the estate of Parambil. Over the course of seven decades, she will be the unwavering enter of this estate and its community. She will discover that there is a curse, they call it a “Condition”, that runs in the family – a drowning in every generation – that no one can explain but that always occurs. In parallel, there is another story, of Digby Kilgour, a young Scottish doctor who travels from Glasgow to Madras to join the Indian medical service during colonial times. The two stories flip flop throughout the book and as you would imagine, eventually come together. Each path is filled with tragedy and a bit of bad luck, with medicine and a history of illness, and with love and a little bit of hope. It has all the elements of great fiction.