The Gold Mohur Tree - Joyce MacKenzie

Set against the backdrop of a newly independent India, The Gold Mohur Tree is the story of four people who meet and live out their lives, first in Calcutta and then in Britain. Their backgrounds and aspirations are markedly different, yet their destinies are linked inexorably.

Josephine Willis is a strong and wilful young woman, rejecting the social niceties of her intolerant mother's generation, those formidable memsahibs of the Raj, and instead caring for the plight of those less fortunate than herself. Her girlhood in India is influenced by the teachings of a sadhu.

She meets Adrian Greene, a charismatic Franco-Indian, who is training to be a doctor and with whom she embarks on a passionate affair. Against the wishes of her family they move to London, where Adrian is dazzled by his surroundings and desperate to gain social and professional standing by any means necessary.

Josephine's life is further complicated by her relationship with the beautiful but mentally unstable Vali Finlayson, who shares Josephine's earlier attraction to Dean Mitchell, an American GI based in India.

The Gold Mohur Tree is full of incident and drama, and presents an authentic picture of India, drawn from the author's own experience of living there for many years.

'The Gold Mohur Tree is a story of marriages that go wrong - and then right - filled with the exotic sights and scents of India and a dash of domestic violence. A valiant debut from Mackenzie, from whom we hope to see more.' - Author Clio Gray