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The blurb
When Patricia accompanies her father, Major George Carstairs, on a trip to Ladakh, north of the Himalayas, in the early 1960s, she sees it as a chance to finally win his love. What she could never have foreseen is meeting Kalden - a local man destined by circumstances beyond his control to be a monk, but fated to be the love of her life.
Despite her father's fury, the lovers are determined to be together, but can their forbidden love survive?
A wonderful story about a passion that crosses cultures, a love that endures for a lifetime, and the hope that can only come from revisiting the past.
1995 - Amy wants to find out about her birth parents and why her mother gave her up for adoption.
The author takes us back to 1951 when Amy's mother, Patricia is just 7 years old and living with her family in London. We find a young girl eager to please her father Major George Carstairs. Not an easy task when her father has difficulty coming to terms with her brother's illness.
In a remote village in Ladakh 8 year old Kalden lives a completely different lifestyle. The fourth son in the family, he knows what his future holds and he is destined to become a Monk.
1962 - Fate brings Amy and Kalden, now aged 18, together in the beautifully serene landscape of Ladakh. Amy and her father travel there to update his notes from an early stay there in his army days. So begins a love story that surely cannot survive the cultural and class divide. Amy is only in Ladakh for a matter of months and Kalden is due to go into the monastery.
Due to circumstances Amy does have leave Ladakh and return to England, but this love story does not end there.
The passion with which Liz Harris writes about Ladakh, it's seasons, cultures and it's people led me to believe that she must have stayed there for her research, just like her character Patricia, but her acknowledgements tell me that research was not undertaken directly in Ladakh. Amazing storytelling.
A beautiful debut novel from Liz Harris. I cannot wait to see what is next from this author. One for me to watch.
I was not sure whether to put this in the historical fiction or historical romance genre. It is much more than just a romance with wonderful descriptions of the landscape and people of Ladakh.
This novel will be in my Top reads for 2012.
10 out of 10 for me!
Review copy from ChocLit. This did not influence my review in any way.
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