Through his protagonists, innocent American Chantley Armstrong, born and raised in an ashram in India, and Afro American Sam Johnson, a university graduate, the author takes the reader on a journey. One in which Chantley who believes that every individual and each nation karma has its own distinct karma. Karma based on good and bad previous actions and relationships. When they meet five days after she came to America for the first time, she experiences a strong connection to Sam and believes they were closely linked in a previous life. He realises she is ill-equipped for life in America and ‘takes her under his wing'.
Sam, an intellectual, questions her belief in karma and asks: ““What can you say about a country that starts its history with a slavery and a genocide?”
When they find out they might have been connected on a plantation in South Carolina before slaves were emancipated, Chantley and Sam journey South and gradually fall in love. On the way to their destination they meet Americans with roots in different cultures. Chantley relates their spiritual beliefs to her Guru-ji's teaching, Sam is sceptical; both of them are concerned with the current state of affairs in America.
I enjoyed the author's descriptions of the states this seemingly ill-matched couple travelled through. For example. “The heat in the valley transformed into a soft white flannel blanket floating half-way up the hills and, above, the red setting sun coloured the cirrus clouds in the turquoise sky. The black road flowed along the canyon's bottom while a series of huge flat red rocks, resembling scales on dinosaur's backs climbed up hillsides, jutting perpendicularly into the sky.”
On many levels, this novel is worth reading until it reaches a satisfying conclusion.
Discovering that they may have been lovers at a plantation in South Carolina during the antebellum period, they journey through the South, visiting places and people connected to America's troubled past and uncertain present.
As they fall deeper in love, their travel exposes conflicts whose origins neither is able to explain. They locate their plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, but its exploration reveals a shocking truth about the real nature of their relationship—one that makes them question who they are, their deep-seated beliefs and the meaning of love.
