The Kashmiri Shawl - Paperback

by Joanne Dobson (Author)

An epic journey from the sultry climes of nineteenth-century India to the cosmopolitan chaos of New York City on the eve of civil in search of a kidnapped daughter and a lost, forbidden love. India, 1857: Anna Wheeler Roundtree, missionary wife, flees her husband's pious tyranny. Her timing is bad: the train carrying her to freedom steams into the midst of the brutal Indian Rebellion. Plucked from danger by Ashok Montgomery, a wealthy Anglo-Indian tea planter, she escapes the angry mobs. In the shelter of an isolated mountain cave, Anna, for the first time, learns the true nature of love. New York City, 1860: Now a successful poet, Anna Wheeler learns that the daughter she bore upon her return from India was not stillborn, as reported, but has been kidnapped. When Anna hears the baby described as "dark-skinned," she knows Ashok, the man she'd left behind in the tumult of the rebellion, is the true father, not her blond, fair-skinned husband. In her own racially inflamed nation, Anna throws respectability to the wind, learns to take risks, break rules, and trust strangers in a determined search for the little girl. Then a deranged voice arises from her tormented past, making demands that compel her back to India. Anna must confront the evil that set her running in the first place. Will her daring quest for her child, and for the love of her life, end in triumph or in heartbreak?

Author Biography

Joanne Dobson is a novelist and a scholar of American women's literature. Her six-book Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series won her an Agatha nomination and a Noted Author of the Year award from the New York State Library Association. THE KASHMIRI SHAWL is her first venture into the genre of historical fiction. Formerly a tenured professor of American Literature at Fordham University, Joanne is a specialist in Emily Dickinson and in the work of nineteenth-century American women writers. Currently she teaches in National Endowment for the Humanities and Fulbright Fellowship International summer programs at Amherst College. She also teaches Creative Writing at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, which this autumn honors her for her multifaceted career as Scholar, Teacher, and Writer of Fiction.