The Faithful Lovers

I want a quiet life from now on. And I don't
want to fall in love…. I think I shall do better
to stay away from affairs of the heart.
One can be so hurt. I don't want to go through that again.



Ninian Whitmead, almost forty years old, has already loved deeply, then lost once in his life. He has resigned himself to life alone on his seaside Cornish estate, Polmawgan House, without wife or family.



But he is not prepared for the ship­wreck of a Courteen pirate ship off the coast of Cornwall that leaves Parvati, a young Indian girl, stranded in a foreign land as its only survivor. At first out of charity, then out of growing affection, Ninian takes the lost girl into his home, and when his attachment deepens to love, he marries her and they have a son.



Though Parvati adopts a Christian name and is baptized into the Anglican church, their solemn Puritan community finds her foreign blood and unfamiliar customs unacceptable. As the stirrings of Civil War in England increase, tragedy seems imminent.



Anand's fourth radiant installment in The Bridge Over Time series follows the Whitmead family through the political and religious tumult of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution.