TheMonsoonRoad

Clare Ashworth is fine. She has been fine for two and a half years — since the phone call, since the funeral, since the last conversation with her daughter, which was not a conversation at all.

Then a parcel arrives from India. Inside is Nisha's journal, a route drawn on the inside of the back cover, and a line in her daughter's handwriting: If you find this, don't send it back. Keep going.

Clare is fifty-eight years old. She designs gardens. She has never ridden a motorcycle in her life. Six weeks later she is sitting on a Royal Enfield in Goa, pointing north — four thousand kilometres of coast road, red plains, holy rivers and Himalayan passes, following a route she didn’t choose towards the place she is most afraid to arrive.

Along the way she meets the people who knew her daughter: a mechanic who taught her to ride, a photographer who has a picture of Nisha laughing. And slowly, at the speed of a bad road, Clare discovers the woman her daughter was becoming — and how little of her she ever let herself see.

A novel about grief, forgiveness, and the terrible courage it takes to stop being fine.