Digital audiobook performed by Justine Eyre
3.5***

The blurb that put this on my TBR promised “Two love stories. 90 years apart.” That’s not quite what I got. But I did get a good historical fiction tale framed by the British leaving India as that country gained its independence.

In 1947, Evie, her husband and son, arrive in India; Martin has a Fulbright Fellowship to study India as part of his Ph.D. dissertation. But the unrest surrounding the coming partition of India and Pakistan results in the family being located in the small village of Masoorla rather than in Dehli. When cleaning the kitchen of their rented bungalow, Evie discovers a loose brick and behind it a stash of letters hidden in a cubbyhole. Those letters were written in the mid 19th century and have been partially destroyed by the heat and humidity of the kitchen, but slowly the story of two British women in India emerges.

Newmark captivated me with this dual story line, although I wasn’t sure there was a real reason to include the lesbian relationship, which was really such a small part of the whole tale. Basically, though, she gives us a story of relationships and the difficulties two people might have as a result of different cultural backgrounds, family expectations, and emotional trauma suffered by one or both of the parties.

Evie narrates most of the story, though flashbacks provide the story of Felicity and Adela. I liked how Evie grew and came to understand her husband and her own emotions by reading the journals / letters / poetry of these long-dead women. The struggles Felicity and Adela endured help Evie realize what she truly valued. Additionally, Evie, an American, has to come to grips with the British mentality as Britain’s rule over India is ending.

Justine Eyre does a fine job of performing the audiobook. She sets a good pace and is able to give the many characters sufficiently unique voices, so it was easy to tell who was speaking. ( )

A good immersive story set in India just before Partition. Martin Mitchell has returned from WWII seriously damaged, emotionally, and he takes his wife and young son to the Indian countryside to work on his PhD dissertation on the subject of how the coming withdrawal of British Colonialists and the separation of the continent into two nations according to religion is affecting its people. Evie Mitchell hopes the complete change, and what she imagines as the romance of an exotic new world will help heal both her husband's invisible wounds and their now troubled marriage. A chance discovery of some old letters between two Victorian women who previously occupied the bungalow she and Martin are living in sends Evie off on a research mission of her own, to find out more about the lives of those women, who obviously shared her love for their adopted land. Engrossing, satisfying, a few surprises, but basically a comfort read.
Review written September 2020 ( )

Rich in details and history, The Sandalwood Tree will keep the reader turning pages. A book that teaches while telling a great story is worth reading, and this book meets that criteria.

Martin, Evie, and Billy leave Chicago to live in India while Martin, a historian, documents the end of the British Raj. As they settle into a small town amid brilliant color, strange customs, and agonizing poverty, the tapestry of the story begins.

Against the wallpaper of a solid but troubled marriage and religious and political turmoil, Evie discovers a few letters secreted away in their rented bungalow. She seeks more information about the people in the letters from a local church. One scrap of information leads to another, along with some accidental, fortuitous finds, and the story of Adele and Felicity emerge. The year is 1947; the letters were written 90 years ago in the Victorian era.

The dual stories of Evie's family in an increasingly war-ravaged, unstable land and young Adele and Felicity's growing up across continents alternate in the book. The characters are finely crafted by the author.

The book engages the senses and emotions leaving the reader with drifts of the story long after it is read. I loved the book. It would make a good movie, if it's possible to fit so much into a movie.

( )

I couldn't help kinda sorta feeling that this book was intentionally crafted to appeal to Sarah Waters fans. But my feeling could be attributed to the fact that I had Waters' 'The Little Stranger next on my queue, and was impatient to start it.
The Sandalwood Tree isn't as good as Waters - but it's still an enjoyable book.; I very much enjoyed the vivid depictions of rural India. However, I felt that the connection between the American woman in India in 1947 and the Victorian lady in the same location in the mid-1800's was a bit forced (the various discoveries of the earlier woman's letters &c became progressively less believable),
I also personally would have preferred more glimpses of events from a local's perspective, rather than only from the foreigners' - it would have made a nice contrast. And the focus on the Americans' marital troubles got a bit Lifetime-y at times, and detracted from the more interesting (to me) social issues that were also brought up by the story.

(Oh, just a note - I love the cover. It looks like an ad for a Merchant Ivory movie... it's why I picked it up.) ( )

When I chose this book I thought 'Oh well, it will be a good enough read to keep me interested.' When I started reading it, I thought 'It's actually really good, I'll like this book.' But I ended up LOVING this book and the author's style of writing!
I've never been in India in my life, nor have I ever read a book set there, but I've always secretly admired it - the colors, the variety of everything, the way people accept their lives as they are there. I'm happy to say that this book was full of images of India, I learned a lot about its culture and customs, even history (the story takes place in the year of British government's departure from India and the Partition).
There are two main story-lines in 'The Sandalwood Tree': one follows the life of Evie Mitchell, her shattering marriage, her attempts to keep the family together, her fascination with the old Victorian secret she tries to uncover, and is set in 1947, while the other follows the scandalous story of two Victorian women, Felicity and Adela, who are willing to risk almost everything to live and be joyful. I've been drawn into both story-lines from the very first chapters and felt all the emotions the characters felt - joy, love, happiness, curiosity, sorrow, fright, sadness, struggle, hope... The author also made a great job of creating at times tear-jerking and at times smile-forcing relationship between mother, Evie, and son, Billy. The only minuses of this book I can think of are slight predictability at times and the ending which I felt was somehow detached from the whole story, not fitting with the carefully-evolved-style of the whole book.
All in all, the way Elle Newton has put all the details, events, characters together so fluently in this one book is amazing and I regret no minute of reading this book. ( )