? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is as captivating as his earlier novel, “Cutting for Stone.” The novel walks us through nearly a century, from 1900 to 1977, where sweeping changes are taking place across the subcontinent. The story is a fictional history that follows a family of Indian Christians, the descendants of a group of St. Thomas converts, as they live, marry, celebrate, mourn, and die in Kerala. But amid the banality of life’s ups and downs, extraordinary things are also taking place: Within every one of the three generations featured in the novel, drowning accidents claim lives regularly. And in a place like Kerala, known for its expansive coastlines and shores for as far as the eye can see, this means that fear and tragedy are ever present. The affliction, which is described as a sort of medical condition, is also the author’s ode to medicine and science, as a trained medical doctor himself. But despite these hardships, the family of Big Ammachi — or big grandmother — who becomes a matriarch over the course of her life after being married off to a forty year old widower when she was only 12, is capable of what looks like eternal hope even in the seemingly darkest of times.

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