Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, THE COVENANT OF WATER follows three generations of a Christian family in Kerala, South India, that suffers a peculiar affliction. In every generation, at least one person dies by drowning. As the novel opens, a 12-year-old girl is sent by boat to her wedding, where she meets her husband for the first time. She joins a prosperous household and becomes known as Big Ammachi, the matriarch of an extraordinary family that will endure hardship, celebrate triumph, and witness unthinkable changes over the coming decades.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Although they come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution, it will be love, not politics --- their passion for the same woman --- that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. When the past catches up to him, Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world.