The Scent of Fallen Stars

A scholarly loner and a musical prodigy come to India for answers, over twenty years apart…

In 1995, thirty-six-year-old Will arrives in newly liberalized India. Smarting from the collapse of his academic dreams, he finds little fulfilment in his well-paying telecommunications job or the social confines of New Delhi’s expat community. One monsoon night, he encounters young, enigmatic Leela, who blazes into his world and unleashes a storm of passion and devastation that will alter it forever.

Twenty-three years later, Aria lands in the city on a quest to find the mother whom she believed to be dead. Estranged from her convalescing father, her journey leads her to unravel the mysteries of her parents’ story and her mother’s life—from her childhood in an orphanage to a doomed love affair and finally, the remote shores of asceticism. As she searches for answers and a sense of belonging, Aria stumbles upon lost worlds, haunting memories, and the explosive secret that torpedoed her father’s life, the reverberations of which will be cataclysmic for her own.