The Woman Who Knew Gandhi

"Based on an aside in Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography in which he mentions a brief but seductive youthful flirtation with an Englishwoman, The Woman Who Knew Gandhi boldly imagines a long correspondence between a spiritual leader from the East and an ordinary woman from the West. In 1948, just after Gandhi's assassination, Martha Houghton receives a letter from Gandhi's son, who himself lies dying of tuberculosis in Bombay. Having found a stash of her letters to his father, he asks to meet her. The request sends Martha into a tailspin, for her husband knows nothing of her lifelong friendship with Gandhi." Martha and her husband are forced to reevaluate their long marriage, and she must find a way to reconcile the disparate halves of her life. Moreover, their small community becomes a magnet for the press, and Martha finds her words twisted and used against her. Ultimately, she must decide whether to meet her old friend's son on his deathbed or to remain in England and mend the rift in her marriage.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Wonderfully imagined, beautifully written, and enormously satisfying." - Elizabeth Berg