The Covenant of Water

The Covenant of Water is a novel by the physician and writer Abraham Verghese, published in 2023 by Grove Press. It follows three generations of a family of Saint Thomas Christians in Kerala, in southwest India, and it runs from 1900 to 1977.

The story opens with Mariamma, a girl of twelve, travelling by boat to the town of Parambil to marry a much older widower, the head of the household, and finding that the family keeps a record of an affliction they call the Condition: in each generation, at least one member dies by drowning, and the deaths are marked on a family tree they call the Water Tree. Mariamma becomes Big Ammachi, the mistress of the estate and the one who holds the family together as its fortunes rise and fall.

A second strand follows Digby Kilgour, a Scottish physician who joins the Indian Medical Service in Madras after finding the medical training he wanted closed to him at home, and whose work brings him to a leprosarium where the families of the novel will converge.