Based on her experiences as a midwife in India, Carolyn North has written a profoundly moving novel revolving around the story of an impoverished servant family, and an all-night ceremony of North Indian flute music. The reader is immersed in the heat and squalor of India, in its extraordinary music, and above all in the Indian worldview, wherein death is but part of all of life. The artist Frederick Franck has called it "A profound inner portrait of India." "Triumphant!" said the Library Journal.