Winter longs to leave cold, grey England and return to India, the land of her birth, but when at last she does, nothing is quite as she hoped. Her husband is a drunken bully, there are strange undercurrents of unrest, and she finds herself deeply attracted to one man who realises that grave troubles are brewing in India. Alex, fighting blind bureaucracy to the best of his ability, sees the shadow and knows that the unrest and secret plotting created by the British rule of India may at any moment explode into violence. When it does, he is torn between aiding a small, desperate group of English women – Winter included – and joining the English forces. Amid horror, chaos and death, against all the odds, Winter and Alex find love. The author, M.M. Kaye, lived in India with her soldier husband for many years, knew and loved that country deeply, and this is reflected in the story she tells of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 – 1858.
