Description: Set in the lush tea gardens of Assam, a state in northeast India, Janice Deaner's new novel blends love, politics, and betrayal. Viv Tagore is a successful American screenwriter long estranged from her Indian husband. When she learns that he is dying of a mysterious illness, she returns to politically unstable Assam to care for him and run the plantation. The seclusion and exotic landscape suit Viv's romantic but retiring nature, however loneliness compels her to invite her volatile friend Stella to join her in India. Stella is an actress whose career is fading and whose unrequited passion for Viv makes her dangerous to her friend and to herself. When Stella brings a handsome stranger (a modern-day Darwin studying extinct species) back to the estate, this unexpected encounter sets off a chain of events and emotions which transform the lives of all involved.

Like her previous novel, The Body Spoken, "Assam" is a novel of love and ideas that echoes an earlier age. Reminiscent of E.M. Forster and Isak Dinesen it examines the attractions and dangers of losing oneself in a foreign culture.

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