The Unbroken Coast - by Nalini Jones (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A stunning debut novel set in and around a Mumbai fishing village that follows the friendship between a young girl struggling to find her place in the world, and an aging historian reckoning with his past.

​On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. It is 1978. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her baby daughter, ill with dengue fever, at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes the child will live.

Nearly a decade later, Francis meets the child again. She is Celia, daughter of a fisherman who is running from a debt collector. When an accident brings their families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves with unexpected new allies.

Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, at time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk, The Unbroken Coast is a lyrical novel that explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home.

Review Quotes

"What a beautifully formed novel. With its changing portraits of two families in a Catholic fishing village outside Mumbai, The Unbroken Coast does what the best fiction does--it is utterly particular and utterly large. And I could not put it down."
--Joan Silber, author of Improvement and Mercy

About the Author

NALINI JONES is the author of a story collection, What You Call Winter. Her writing has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, Guernica, Elle India, Scroll, and numerous other publications in the U.S. and India. She has been awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, among other honors, and her short story "Tiger" was selected for O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, daughters, and dogs, and teaches at Fairfield University.