A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart

The lyrical and ambitious sophomore outing from Batsha (after Mother Ocean Father Nation) examines turbulence on the American home front during WWI and its aftermath. In 1917, Stanford graduate student Cora Tent meets Indian immigrant Indranath Mukherjee at a party. Their chemistry is passionate and combustible. Through his fight for Indian independence, Indra has aligned himself with the Germans and has come to California via that alliance. His activism excites Cora, and despite warnings from her best friend, Hazel, and her academic adviser, she goes all in on the romance. They wed and move to New York City, where Indra can more openly pursue his support for Indian independence. Batsha’s deep historic research informs the portraits of his protagonists, who bear similarities to anti-colonial feminist Evelyn Trent and her husband, M.N. Roy, and the novel pulls off a tricky balancing act between florid romance (“Her heart was being branded, no longer was it her own”) and freewheeling modernism (“They could be anyone, as long as they were together”). This one leaves a mark. Agent: Jamie Carr, Book Group. (July)