The year is 1950. In a sprawling mansion on a vast estate hidden in the heart of Madras lives eight-year-old Krishna, the youngest member of the proud and powerful Naidu family. Surrounded by siblings and cousins, and aunts and uncles who squabble amiably under the benevolent rule of his grandparents, Krishnas life is quite the ideal one.

But Krishnas father has always been different-aloof from the close-knit family, fatally seduced by his years at Oxford and continually dreaming of his beloved England. And when he brings an Englishwoman, Victoria Greene, into his childrens lives, first as their governess and then as their stepmother, staking a claim on their inheritance, Krishna watches in horror as his perfect world shatters around him. Can the Naidu children withstand the force of such betrayal, or will they succumb to the avaricious schemes of an outsider obsessed with the fulfilment of her own selfish desires?