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This is a contemporary story of adventure, love, nostalgia and tragedy that is set in the tea estates of Dooars—floodplains that lie south of the northeastern Himalayas. TRISHA, a young American field biologist, arrives in Dooars to research human-animal conflict, particularly between elephants and the growing human population that is left unemployed due to the dwindling tea industry.
Brojen and Trisha connect instantly, as they share an enthusiastic admiration and love for the natural world. The extent of personal toll that human-animal conflict exacts is evident in the fact that Brojen had lost his mother in a leopard attack when he was only ten years old. The family comes together when Bhanu, beloved patriarch and an influential and highly regarded businessman in the community, suddenly descends into a coma. Drama unfolds as the facade of Bhanu’s good deeds shatters and ugly truths about his life reveal themselves, including his appetite for a certain aphrodisiacal mad honey that had taken Brojen on a journey across the Nepal Himalayas in the past.
Alongside this, romance buds between the optimistic and gentle Joy and the hesitant and guarded Trisha as he gets involved in her research, which itself is dappled with incidents of elephant electrocution, forest fires and poaching. Occasional peeks into the past lives of these characters brings to surface the undercurrents of disjunct family relations dictated by desire, prestige, contempt and, above all, love.
Lekha Sharma
Lekha was born and raised in Kalimpong, India. She spent most of her childhood exploring the surrounding hills and nearby tea gardens. She currently lives in Chicago and is a proud mom of twin daughters. Tea Country is her first novel. The book is inspired by the day-to-day life that she witnessed when she visited her cousins in Dooars.
