Catherine MacDonald is astonished to receive from her twin brother--who had apparently drowned a year earlier in the monsoon floods of 1821--a kashmiri shawl, a caddy of unusual tea, and a sheaf of traditional bagpipe music in his handwriting. When had he sent it? And why had he retitled a certain tune "Not Yet Drown'd"? Irresistibly, she is drawn to India to search for answers. With her stepdaughter and their two maids--one an enigmatic Hindu, the other a runaway American slave--she follows an obscure trail of tea, opium, and bagpipe music, discovering unsuspected truths about the man she is...

This novel thrillingly evokes a nineteenth-century America not so different from the present: a time of stunning new technologies and financial collapse, when religious and racial views collided with avowed principles of morality and law.