The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

 Around 1900 a 12-year-old girl is sent in a boat to meet her new husband, a fairly well-off 42-year-old farmer.  The story follows the girl and her offspring for three generations as they face heartache and find love in a harsh social environment. It also follows two other men, one a surgeon from Glasgow and another, a doctor from India who sets up a leper colony. Both men make good decisions and bad, and have to deal the consequences their decisions bring.  

Full, disclosure, I didn't finish this book.  I got about half the way through and decided I was done. In my defense, the book is 972 pages long, so I actually listened to 15 hours out of 30 before calling it quits.  There were things I liked about the book, but, clearly there were things I didn't like about the book.  The thing I liked was the immersive picture it draws of life in rural India in the 1900's.  The reader and almost see, smell, and taste the world where Big Ammachi lives.  I also liked watching the relationship of Big Ammachi and her husband slowly develop as the frightened 12-year-old girl grows up and wins the heart of the heart-broken widower.  What I didn't like about the book was that I felt like the author was manipulating my emotions.  It was like he was saying, "how can I make this as sad a possible."  (spoiler alert, if you plan to read this book, don't read on)  When the first generation lost their first born son to a tragic accident, it was like, OK, things like that happen, and it was sweet to see how the couple managed to heal.  Then other tragic deaths kept happening and it became apparent that the author was killing off the characters to make the story more symbolic. The married girlfriend of the doctor dies right after they give into their passion and commit adultery.  The toddler son of the second generation dies when he is impaled on the branch of a tree the father had promised his wife to cut down, but couldn't bring himself to cut down all the way.  Then his wife left and the husband became an opium addict, and I thought, "this author is now just messing with me and I don't want to read this anymore."  I am a bit curious to know how the author brings the three different story lines together in the end but not enough to listen to another 15 hours of ritual death and heart-wrenching tragedy.  Maybe I will go read a summary somewhere. (972 p, 2023)