The Storyteller's Secret

The Storyteller’s Secret, a fictional romance published by Lake Union Publishing in 2018, is written by former attorney and Goodreads Best Fiction finalist Sejal Badani. The novel tells the story of several generations of women as they cope with the grief, lost love, and emotional isolation that they encounter in their families and marriages. Told primarily from two different perspectives, The Storyteller’s Secret examines the patriarchal, colonial society of India in the 1930s and 1940s through Amisha, a young writer eager to secure freedom from her familial duties. Two generations later, Jaya, Amisha’s granddaughter, struggles to cope with the grief of several miscarriages and the dissolution of her marriage. She travels to India in the hopes of rediscovering her family’s hidden history and there learns of her grandmother’s incredible story of forbidden, unconditional love.

This guide references the paperback version of The Storyteller’s Secret published by Lake Union press. Please note: The guide uses the term “Untouchable” to refer to the Dalit caste, to reflect the novel’s usage of this label.

Plot Summary

As the narrative opens, Jaya experiences a third consecutive miscarriage. Her marriage to Patrick is threatened by Jaya’s inability to emotional share the burden of loss with her husband; Patrick proposes a separation, moving out of their apartment and casually seeing one of Jaya’s friends.

Jaya’s mother Lena receives a letter from her family in India saying that Jaya’s grandfather Deepak is near death. Jaya decides to travel to India, both to distract herself from her grief and to discover the extended family and culture that Lena never wanted to share with her. At her family’s ancestral home, Jaya meets Ravi, a longtime family servant. Ravi reveals that Deepak died before Jaya arrived, but he left something for Lena. Before Ravi gives this to Jaya, Jaya must promise to listen to the story of her grandmother that he has kept to himself for decades.

The novel flashes back into Amisha’s time frame. Amisha, a young woman in a new arranged marriage to Deepak in 1930s colonial India, dreams of finding the freedom of expression and experience she writes about in her stories. As Amisha and Deepak have several children and grow the family’s business, Amisha becomes restless in her subservient and constricted life in the village. She employs an Untouchable, Ravi, as her personal servant despite the strict caste differences in their society. An English school is set to open nearby, which Amisha is determined to attend so that she may learn how to write her stories in English.

The school’s head, Stephen, has a better offer: Amisha will teach a creative writing class in Hindi and receive personal lessons in English writing from him in exchange. Amisha and Stephen spend a lot of time together in the school’s garden. With Deepak often away on business, Ravi helps to keep Amisha’s house in order and raise the children as Amisha pursues her education.

Protests supporting India’s freedom from British colonial rule spread through the country, and it soon becomes impossible for Amisha to pretend to be unaffected by England’s colonialism. Her developing love for Stephen conflicts with the reality of his being a British soldier. However, the love between Amisha and Stephen is too great for them to deny. Amisha struggles to reconcile her familial responsibilities as wife and mother with her feelings for Stephen. Amisha and Stephen exchange letters through Ravi, and then become physically involved.

Amisha becomes pregnant with Stephen’s child, but hides the child’s paternity from both Stephen and Deepak, convincing all those around her that the child is Deepak’s—everyone except Ravi, who knows her secret and keeps it safely hidden. Distraught by the complications of their affair, Stephen applies for a transfer and is sent to the front lines of World War II. He visits Amisha once more when she is heavily pregnant and implores her to run away with him. Amisha, however, has made her decision: She cannot leave her children without a mother.

Amisha has a daughter, Lena. Soon after giving birth, Amisha is bitten by a mosquito and contracts encephalitis—a fatal viral swelling of the brain. She extracts two promises from the men closest to her in life: She makes Deepak promise to send Lena to America, and makes Ravi promise to keep her story secret until he can tell it to her daughter.

Ravi reveals another secret to Jaya at the conclusion of Amisha’s story. After their daughter was born, Stephen visited the house again. But instead of telling Amisha or letting Stephen see the child, Ravi told Stephen to leave so as to protect Amisha’s happiness.

All of Jaya’s preconceived notions about family, history, and culture are upended as she listens to Amisha’s story. The story motivates her growth, as she comes to realize the abundance of choices she has at her disposal. Patrick comes to India and the two reunite. They decide to take a different route to being parents—adoption from the local Ashram. With Amisha’s story finally revealed in full, Ravi presents Lena’s inheritance: the letters exchanged between Amisha and Lena’s true father, Stephen. His duty fulfilled and his guilty conscience absolved by Jaya’s forgiveness, Ravi is able to die peacefully with the ghost of Amisha in his thoughts.