About The Unbroken Coast
A stunning debut novel that follows the friendship between a young girl who is growing up in a Mumbai fishing village and an aging historian who must reckon with his past.
On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her infant at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes her child will live.
By the time Francis meets Celia again, she has run away from school. Her father is running from a debt-collector, at a time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk. When an accident brings the families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves in unexpected new territory, with unexpected new allies.
Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, this lyrical novel explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home.
ISBN 9781400042777
“What a beautifully formed novel. With its changing portraits of two families in a Catholic fishing village outside Mumbai, The Unbroken Coast does what the best fiction does—it is utterly particular and utterly large. And I could not put it down.”
—Joan Silber, author of Improvement and Mercy
About Nalini
NALINI JONES is the author of a novel, The Unbroken Coast, and story collection, What You Call Winter. Her work has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, Guernica, Elle India, Scroll, and numerous other publications in the U.S. and India, and she has contributed to anthologies about politics, music, and families, including those affected by HIV in AIDS Sutra. She has been awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, among other honors, and her short story “Tiger” was selected for O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. She is also a longtime coordinator of live music events. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, daughters, and dogs, and is an Assistant Professor of Engliash at Fairfield University.
Her credits in music include Associate Producer of the Newport Folk Festival 2004-09, Line Producer of the 2005 televised benefit From the Big Apple to the Big Easy at Madison Square Garden, and Backstage Manager at Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
