Teatime for the Firefly

Book excerpt: 1940's India. During this volatile and transitional time in the country's fight for independence, Layla is astrologically doomed never to marry. Manik's career and arranged marriage were charted for success. But by cleverly manipulating the hand fortune has dealt her, Layla has found love with Manik. Layla's life as a newly married woman takes her away from home and into the jungles of Assam, where the world's finest tea thrives on plantations run by native labor and British efficiency. Fascinated by this culture of whiskey-soaked expats who seem fazed by neither earthquakes nor man-eating leopards, she struggles to find her place among the prickly English wives with whom she is expected to socialize, and the peculiar servants she now finds under her charge.