New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone and distinguished medical doctor Abraham Verghese returns to Pittsburgh with his highly anticipated second novel, The Covenant of Water.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water of follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala on the South Indian Coast, water is everywhere. A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor, and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a best-selling author and a physician with a reputation for his focus on healing in an era where technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. His first book, My Own Country, about AIDS in rural Tennessee, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Cutting for Stone, his first novel, has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. He received the Heinz Award in 2014 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama, in 2015.