Ross Monroe is a boxing railwayman with a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes. Kate Lyle is a headstrong young woman desperate to escape a nightmarish household. As mid-century India sheds its colonial skin and the shadow of violence rises, these young lovers find themselves facing their own "tryst with destiny."

In twenty-first-century London, Owen Monroe is writing this story of his parents' lives in an effort to avoid the problems in his own. But keeping past and present apart isn't easy, and before long Owen is deep in the one story he never wanted to tell....