The Tea Planter's Daughter (India Tea #1; Tyneside Sagas #1)

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

loved ones. But as they embark on epic adventures across a fast-changing world, will the upheavals of war and the dying days of the British Raj stop their

stinkin’ food away!’ ‘But, sahib, you must eat—’ There was a splintering crash of china hitting the teak door frame.

through the thin bungalow walls. Olive, round-eyed with fear, dropped the bow of her violin at the sound of their father

forced a smile at her petrified younger sister and dashed for the door, nearly colliding with Kamal, their Bengali khansama, retreating hastily from her father’s study, his bearded face

raging drunk beyond the door was a pathetic shadow of a once-vigorous, warm-hearted man. ‘He must have been to the village to

‘I’m sorry, Miss Clarissa.’ ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said hastily. They listened unhappily to the sound

rain in a few days.’ Clarrie was touched by the man’s loyalty, but they both knew it was not just bouts of fever that bedevilled her father. His drinking had grown steadily

died – crushed by a toppling tree as she lay in bed, pregnant with their third child. Now Jock was banned from buying alcohol at the officers’ mess in Shillong and

villagers or bowls of opium to numb his despair. ‘Go and make some tea,’ Clarrie suggested, ‘and sit with Olive. She doesn’t like to be on her own.

knocked firmly on the study door. Her father shouted back in a jumble of English and Bengali. Bravely, Clarrie opened the door a crack. ‘Babu,’ she called,

glow of the oil lamp she could see him swaying amid the wreckage like a survivor from a storm. Mildewed books torn from their shelves and shards

were scattered across the wooden floor among a splattered mess of rice and dhal. A fried fish lay stranded at his feet. The