The Pool In The Desert

In the heat and hardship of an Indian frontier station, a poor military family tries to make love and duty coexist. The narrator, a military wife with a sharp eye and dark humor, recounts the exhausting realities of poverty, illness, and separation as her newborn daughter Cecily is sent to England for safety just when her father falls gravely ill. What follows is a painful, often satirical meditation on motherhood: Cecily grows up among respectable relatives and well-meaning aunts, becoming more a distant possession than a living child, while her mother receives polished letters that reveal little of her true self. Years later, reunion only deepens the wound. Cecily recoils from her mother, who must hide jealousy and grief behind cold politeness as she confronts the child's loyalty to another world. The story then widens to the voyage home through the tropics and the social life of Anglo-Indians returning from service, where the narrator's wit and longing mingle with encounters that expose the tensions of empire, class, and belonging. Alongside this domestic drama runs a parallel concern with art and ambition, as the gifted but unstable Ingersoll Armour rises toward public success, forcing everyone around him to ask what is gained, and what is lost, when talent is rewarded by society. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.