About The Unbroken Coast

A stunning debut novel that follows the friendship between a young girl who is growing up in a Mumbai fishing village and an aging historian who must reckon with his past.

On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her infant at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes her child will live.

By the time Francis meets Celia again, she has run away from school. Her father is running from a debt-collector, at a time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk. When an accident brings the families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves in unexpected new territory, with unexpected new allies.

Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, this lyrical novel explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home. 

ISBN 9781400042777