The Tea Planter's Wife: The mesmerising escapist historical romance that became a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller

Dinah Jefferies

Sep 2015 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A haunting, tender portrait of a woman forced to choose between her duty as a wife and her instinct as a mother...

Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper steps off a steamer in Ceylon, Sri Lanka full of optimism, eager to join her new husband. But the man who greets her at the tea plantation is not the same one she fell in love with in London.

Distant and brooding, Laurence spends long days wrapped up in his work, leaving his young bride to explore alone. It's a place filled with clues to the past - locked doors, a yellowed wedding dress in a dusty trunk, an overgrown grave, far too small for an adult...

Gwen soon falls pregnant and her husband is overjoyed, but she has little time to celebrate. In the delivery room the new mother is faced with a terrible choice. When the time comes, how will her husband ever understand what she has done?

'A truly absorbing book' Reader Review

'So many twists and turns. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next' Reader Review

'It takes you continuously into new places' Reader Review

'The writer creates the scene with such colour' Reader Review

Ratings and reviews

This is my 1st reading book by Author Dinah, and make me fall in love by her story. It easy for me to understand her writing and i have the merchants daughter book too.. I want read all her books.. I want try to buy ebook because i can't get it in any bookstores in my country..

Well written -was it factually correct though that babies from the lines were used as bait for crocodile hunting - what barbaric behaviour from those who should have known better - very accurate and interesting descriptions of sri lankan places specially the hill country.

Excellent atmospheric tale of racial and class discrimination, love and trust , fast and gripping read you just want to keep turning the pages

About the author

Dinah Jefferies was born in Malaysia and moved to England at the age of nine. Her idyllic childhood always held a special place in her imagination, and when she began writing novels in her 60s, she was able to return there - first in her fiction and then on annual research trips for each new novel. Dinah Jefferies is the author of novels, The Separation, The Tea Planter's Wife - a Number One Sunday Times bestseller, The Silk Merchant's Daughter, Before the Rains and The Missing Sister. She lives in Gloucestershire.