The Sandalwood Tree

Newmark's (The Book of Unholy Mischief) evocative writing takes center stage in her second novel, set mostly in 1947 India, on the eve of partition. When Martin is awarded a Fulbright to study Indian politics, he, Evie, and their young son, Billy, move to Delhi. Evie hopes that India will allow Martin, troubled since returning from WWII, to rediscover himself and reinvest in their marriage, but it doesn't turn out that way. She feels isolated by his lingering detachment and by the cultural divide between the Indians and the British, but her discovery of a parcel of letters written nearly a century earlier consumes her life. Driven to determine what happened to the two Englishwomen behind the correspondence, her research eventually uncovers an intimate journal written by one of them, and this discovery gives Newmark's book an absorbing and welcome historical context. Though Evie and Martin's own story ends abruptly, Newmark deftly illustrates the cultural parallels of both eras, and blends the two narratives well. (Apr.)