For fans of The Tea-Planter’s Wife and Victoria Hislop comes a gripping story of doomed love and secrets in 1940s Kashmir.

An epic journey from the sultry climes of nineteenth-century India to the cosmopolitan chaos of New York City on the eve of civil in search of a kidnapped daughter and a lost, forbidden love. India, 1857: Anna Wheeler Roundtree, missionary wife, flees her husband's pious tyranny. Her timing is bad: the train carrying her to freedom steams into the midst of the brutal Indian Rebellion. Plucked from danger by Ashok Montgomery, a wealthy Anglo-Indian tea planter, she escapes the angry mobs. In the shelter of an isolated mountain cave, Anna, for the first time, learns the true nature of love. New York City, 1860: Now a successful poet, Anna Wheeler learns that the daughter she bore upon her return from India was not stillborn, as reported, but has been kidnapped. When Anna hears the baby described as "dark-skinned," she knows Ashok, the man she'd left behind in the tumult of the rebellion, is the true father, not her blond, fair-skinned husband. In her own racially inflamed nation, Anna throws respectability to the wind, learns to take risks, break rules, and trust strangers in a determined search for the little girl. Then a deranged voice arises from her tormented past, making demands that compel her back to India. Anna must confront the evil that set her running in the first place. Will her daring quest for her child, and for the love of her life, end in triumph or in heartbreak?

- Lavishly illustrated, the book offers a comprehensive view of pashmina, one of the most exqusite textiles ever woven - Constructs a complete narrative of the textile, from the raw material to the finished product - Covers the history for the pashmina industry from the nomadic tribes to the fashion industry The classic Kashmir shawl is among the most exquisite textiles ever woven, the product of consummate skill and artistry applied to one of the world's most delicate fibers. This authoritative study introduces the Kashmir shawl as a cultural artifact with a known history spanning four centuries. Lavishly illustrated and accessibly written, the revised edition of this book has much to offer textile scholars, and those interested in the history of Kashmir. Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements; Maps; Introduction: A Felicitous Conjunction. PART I: THE FIBRE - Chapter 1: Pashm and Other Animal Fibres; Chapter 2: Changra and Changpa: The Goats and Their Herders - Monisha Ahmed; Chapter 3: From Changthang to Srinagar: The Pashm Trade. PART 2: THE TEXTILE - Chapter 4: Spinners, Weavers, and Needleworkers; Chapter 5: Design and Designers. PART 3: THE HISTORY - Chapter 6: Early History: Conjecture and Speculation; Chapter 7: The Mughal Period; Chapter 8: The Iran Connection: The Termeh; Chapter 9: The Business in the 19th Century. PART 4: BY LAND AND SEA - Chapter 10: The Kashmir Shawl in India; Chapter 11: The Kashmir Shawl in Iran, West Asia, and Russia; Chapter 12: Shawls in the West. PART 5: CASHMERE AND KASHMIR - Chapter 13: Beyond the Shawl: Pashmina Becomes Cashmere; Chapter 14: Meanwhile, Back in the Valley. Appendix I Update 2008-17; Appendix II Myths, Misconceptions, and Oddities; Appendix III Terminology and Glossary; Notes and References; Bibliography; Picture Credits; Index.

This richly illustrated volume examines the remarkable Kashmiri shawls of the Walter Koelz Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. Part I presents the history, production, forms, and ornamentation of Kashmiri shawls, focusing on the impact of social contexts and the advent of the Jacquard loom on shawl development. Part II is a detailed descriptive catalogue of the shawls in the Koelz Collection. An accompanying CD-ROM includes color illustrations of the shawls in the collection as well as a transcribed manuscript by Koelz.

The authors bring fresh clarity to the many myths that have arisen around the Kashmiri shawl on the South Asian trade circuit. They also interpret most of the complexities in the Kashmiri shawl lexicon.

Sitting in her grandmother Dhanna's kitchen, surrounded by the aromas of mint and the smoke of a hookah, warmed by the kangri tucked beneath her thighs, young Sudha Koul listened to tales of She Who Fears Nothing: The Tiger Lady, stories Sudha would repeat to her own daughters in time, though in a kitchen many thousands of miles away from her beloved Kashmir. This is a magical memoir of a land now consumed by political and religious turmoil, a richly detailed story of a girl's passage into maturity, marriage, and motherhood in the midst of an exquisite and fragile world that will never be entirely the same.