Book Review: The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies

Tea Planters Wife
Cover art is copyright of Penguin Random House

The Tea Planter’s Wife is a period piece, set in the 1920’s and 30’s in Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka) on a tea plantation. The main character, Gwen, moves there from England after marrying an older man, Laurence Hooper, who runs his family’s tea plantation. Amidst the backdrop of the beautiful plantation house and the workers’ run down quarters, Gwen quickly learns that race and class differences are aplenty in her new world and struggles to align her morals of treating everyone the same with what is expected of her in her new household. The story unfolds as Gwen adjusts to her new life and new role and as we learn that she carries with her a secret, a secret which she feels would destroy her marriage and ruin her life. Keep on Reading!