Hampshire, UK, 2015. When Chloe Harper’s beloved grandmother, Lena dies, a stranger hands her Lena’s wartime diary. Chloe sets out to uncover deep family secrets that Lena guarded to her grave.

Darjeeling, India, 1943. Lena Chatterjee leaves the confines of a strict boarding school to work as assistant to Lieutenant George Harper, an officer in the British Indian Army. She accompanies him to Nepal and deep into the Himalayas to recruit Gurkhas for the failing Burma Campaign. There, she discovers that Lieutenant Harper has a secret, which she vows never to reveal.

In Kathmandu, the prophesy of a mysterious fortune teller sets Lena on a dangerous course. She joins the Women’s Auxiliary Service Burma (the Wasbies), risking her life to follow the man she loves to the front line. What happens there changes the course of her life.

On her quest to uncover her grandmother’s hidden past, Chloe herself encounters mystery and romance. Helped by young Nepalese tour guide, Kiran Rai, she finds history repeating itself when she is swept up in events that spiral out of control…

Review

I thoroughly enjoyed this wartime story set in Kolkata, Darjeeling, Nepal and finally wartime Burma.

The main character Chloe is on the trail of her grandmother to find out more of her life, and we read Lena’s (the grandmother’s story) through extracts from her diary. These are skilfully woven into the book and help the reader to flow seamlessly from the past to the present. The unusual locations and Ann Bennett’s descriptions of India and Burma are definitely a highlight of the book. There are two main male characters in the book, Billy, who Lena first meets in hospital, and George Harper, an army officer. We know from the beginning of the book who Lena chooses to spend her life with, but why? And what happened to the other man?

The settings are beautifully done – this is an era and place that appealed to me because of my own family history, and Ann Bennett more than delivered on my expectations. It is not all romance, as this is the war with Japan — and the army camps, the fighting, bombings and the grim reality of civilian tragedies are all well portrayed, and with all the visceral tension you would expect. A book such as this takes mountains of research, and here the research is fed into the book without overwhelming the reader.

If you are looking for a wartime story with romance and an unusual location, then try this, it’s a great read.

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About Ann Bennett

Ann Bennett is a British author of historical fiction. She was born in Pury End, a small village in Northamptonshire, UK and now lives in Surrey. Her first book, Bamboo Heart: A Daughter’s Quest, was inspired by researching her father’s experience as a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway. Bamboo Island: The Planter’s Wife, A Daughter’s Promise and Bamboo Road:The Homecoming, The Tea Panter’s Club and The Amulet are also about the war in South East Asia, which together with The Fortune Teller of Kathmandu make up the Echoes of Empire Collection.

Ann is also author of The Runaway Sisters, bestselling The Orphan House, The Forgotten Children and The Child Without a Home, published by Bookouture. The Lake Pavilion, The Lake Palace, both set in British India in the 1930s and WW2, and The Lake Pagoda and The Lake Villa, set in French Indochina during WW2, make up The Oriental Lake Collection.

Ann is married with three grown up sons and a granddaughter and works as a lawyer. For more details please visit https://www.annbennettauthor.com/