The Secrets of the Tea Garden

Libby Robson sails from England to India after the Second World War. She was sent away fourteen years earlier, leaving behind her father, James, and the childhood home she has never stopped missing. Now she is going back to a place she remembers with great love.

James owns a tea plantation in Assam, and Libby is quickly taken by what she sees, from the crowded streets of Calcutta to the green rows of the tea gardens. Under the surface, unrest is growing. Independence is close, and British rule is nearly over.

As a plantation owner, James stands for the colonial system that many Indians resent. Libby begins to doubt the picture of her childhood that she has carried for so long, and her doubts sharpen when she meets Ghulam Khan, a freedom fighter. Their meeting draws her toward the cause he serves.

The approach of Independence makes life unsafe for Libby, for James and for Ghulam alike. Then James confesses a shameful secret about the family, and Libby has to look again at where she comes from and what she wants next. This is historical fiction set in the last years of the Raj, with a family drama and a possible romance at its centre.