Chapel Hill, NC: Allan Swallow, Publisher, (2001). First edition - Second novel by this award-winning writer who was born in India, now lives and writes in Canada. "In a small town by the Bay of Bengal in India, Sripathi Rao, a headstrong man and disenchanted copywriter, lives in his crumbling ancestral home, uncomfortably aware of the encroaching modern world. Then, early one morning, Sripathi is awakened by a call from Canada: his long-estranged daughter and her husband have been killed in a car accident. Their surviving seven-year-old child, Nandana, is about to become his reluctant ward. Yet Nandana has never met her grandfather, has never been to India, and hasn't spoken a word since the tragedy." 359 pp. ISBN: 1-565123123.