The Satapur Moonstone

Palace intrigue at its height in The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey. Parsi lawyer Perveen Mistry, the only female lawyer in Indian, is sent to the state of Satapur to try to settle a dispute between the dowager maharani and her daughter-in-law.

With the death of maharaja two years before and the death of the teenaged heir apparent, Satapur's next maharaja is a 10-year-old. His mother wants him educated in England; his grandmother wants him to stay at home. Perveen is sent because the women follow purdah and do not speak to men.

As Perveen sets off to the remote kingdom, she first arrives at the British circuit house of the Kolapur Agency, the overseer of the princely and feudal states in Western India. There she learns the British Colin Sandringham had tried to visit the palace, but had been unsuccessful and she learns something about the history of the royal family.

His Majesty Mahendra Rao died from cholera, but there is some

question about how his son died. Maharaja Pratap Rao was thirteen and on a hunting expedition with his uncle Prince Swaroop when he became lost in the woods and was mauled by a wild animal. Now the second son Jiva Rao is the target of a tug of war between his grandmother and his mother and possibly a murder plot.

Perveen hopes to reason with the women and come to a mutual agreement, but once she arrives at the palace, she realizes it will be more difficult to resolve the education situation than she had thought. The animosity between the women crackles with electricity and their respective "camps" are at suspicious of each other and will barely listen to what Perveen has to say.

The richness of Indian culture - warts and all - is splendidly described in this excellent novel.