Song in the Ruins

SONG IN THE RUINS is an epic story of love, loss, acceptance and forgiveness, grounded in history, time and place. It spans across two continents, from a small village in India-to the turmoil ridden campuses at Stonybrook, Berkeley and beyond-to the serene Willamette River in the foothills of Calapooya Mountains in Eugene, Oregon. In the stretch of three decades, as the protagonist's life unfolds and is overtaken by grief and death, the choice he makes can only be understood in the context of the setting. When Mohan Samanta travels from his native India to America to pursue higher education, he expects to stay only long enough to complete his PhD. But this stretches into decades after he marries Sophie, a twice-married widow with a young son. For this, Mohan pays dearly when his parents back in India disown him for marrying a Christian. A decade later, the loving, secure life Mohan has built with Sophie crumbles after she takes her own life. Desperate to escape his immense pain, Mohan turns to philosophies of Gita and Vedanta, and to meditation. He becomes an ascetic and adopts the name Sukhatma, rejecting all ties to his past. But after years of training his mind to forget, Sukhatma must follow his guru's command that, to forgive his parents and truly shed his past, he has to revisit the place he comes from. In the end, Sukhatma faces the ultimate test of choosing between his new life and the one he left behind.