J
Janet MacLeod Trotter
Girl from the Tea Garden
Synopsis
Adela Robson is an Anglo-Indian schoolgirl growing up amid the tea gardens of Assam, torn between the traditions of the fading British Raj and her own ambitions for a life on the stage. When she slips away from her convent school in the back of Sam Jackman's car, she steps into the glittering, uncertain world of 1930s colonial India.
In Simla, the summer capital of the Raj administration, Adela is swept into a whirl of parties, romance and rivalry as Anglo-Indian society clings to its old certainties even as change presses in from every side. As the decade turns and the Second World War draws closer, the novel follows Adela and her extended family through the Robson tea dynasty first introduced in The Tea Planter's Daughter and The Tea Planter's Bride, tracing what it means to belong to two worlds at once.
Drawing on family diaries and letters from her own grandparents, who lived and worked in the Punjab for nearly three decades, Janet MacLeod Trotter grounds the India Tea series in real colonial history, following the Robson family from the tea gardens of the 1920s into the upheavals of the war years.
Genres
Characters
Adela RobsonProtagonist
Anglo-Indian schoolgirl who dreams of a career on the stage.
Sam JackmanSupporting
Driver who helps Adela slip away from school.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read the previous books in the India Tea series to understand this story?
The narrative functions effectively as a standalone experience, so you do not need to read the earlier installments to follow the plot or character arcs.
Is there any real-world inspiration behind the setting of this book?
The author drew inspiration from the personal diaries of her grandfather, who worked as a forester in the Himalayan foothills during the 1920s and 1930s. She even located the specific house in Shimla where her grandparents once lived with her mother, which served as a primary reference for the novel's backdrop.