<p><i>The Covenant of Water</i> is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller <i>Cutting for Stone</i>, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the <i>New York Times</i> bestseller list for over two years.</p> <br> <p>Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, <i>The Covenant of Water</i> is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning--and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl--and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi--will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.</p> <br> <p>A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, <i>The Covenant of Water</i> is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.</p>