Enamored by the elegant life and progressive ideas of the white colonists in British India, fourteen-year-old Reva dreams of learning the English language, of getting an education and a smidgeon of empowerment that might come with it. When a hasty and peculiar marriage arrangement uproots Reva from her childhood in the plains to a village in the mountains, Reva's dream falters under the conflicting demands of her new family and her own need to belong. Reva's new home in the idyllic mountains also puts her in close proximity with the firangi, foreigners. As Reva navigates through a maze of risky decisions and deceptions, she is forced to examine the deep-rooted issues of identity, acceptance, and dominance. She is forced to rethink her loyalties. Falling in love along the way with her much-older husband, a firm British loyalist, only complicates matters further.