# Read the first page of The Splendor of Silence by Indu Sundaresan Read the opening of The Splendor of Silence by Indu Sundaresan free, no signup. Love across cultures in wartime India. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-splendor-of-silence-indu-sundaresan - Genre: Historical romance - Year: 2007 - ISBN: 9780743283687 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780743283687&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780743283687 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780743283687 ## The opening Sam painted the stairs that zigzag down the cliff’s face to culminate at the beach. He had asked Olivia what color she wanted, and she had said red, so he painted the stairs Victoria Red—the same color as his breathtakingly expensive 1950 Crown Imperial limousine. Olivia was seven that year, and remembers lying on the sand in the hot sun, looking up as her father meticulously painted his way down. Having cornered himself and her on the beach by nightfall, they jogged up to the cabin, careful not to bump against the railings, but leaving footprints on the paint-wet wood. Olivia still has those red-soled shoes, but now, fourteen years later, fourteen Northwest summers and winters have stripped the paint, bleached the wood, weathered the railings into an old woman’s face. A gust of wind grasps Olivia’s hair, yanks it loose from the collar of her coat, and sets it flying. One strand whips over her mouth, soaks into the tears that fall down her cheeks. She looks up the cliff in the approaching darkness and imagines that she sees a light in the window—one her father has lighted in welcome. But Sam died five days ago; he will never come here again. Elsa the dog nudges against Olivia’s shins to remind her that it is cold here, and begins the climb up the seventy-nine steps. Olivia slowly follows, hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched about her ears. Once Sam said to Olivia, “You look like your mother.” She had just washed her waist-length hair, and drowsy from the bath, had laid her head on a pillow in front of the wood stove and fanned the strands out to dry. Sleep fled. “I do, Papa?” she asked. “Did you love her?” “With all of my heart; I still love her, as I love you.” “Tell me about her. Tell me about my mother.” “Later,” Sam said. “Later.” He always said later. Olivia would then gaze intently in the mirror, trying to find her mother in herself—in her ebony hair, her curved eyebrows, even the elongated shape of the blue eyes she has inherited from Sam. Her Indian side and her American side. They came to this cabin from Seattle each summer to while away the long daylight hours when Sam did not have to teach. He would write and she would fish desultorily in the chilled waters of the cove, or read, or throw sticks for Elsa until he was done for the day and they could go to the store or the library. She did not lack companions her age in the neighboring cabins, but she did not want them; she only wanted summers unadulterated by anyone but her father. On most weekends though, Grandma Maude would come to visit, and they would eat dinners by candlelight on the outside deck as the day died, and the night was born in skies of jewellike stars. On other nights, they would build a fire on the beach, huddling together in a blanket while Sam told her stories, and Olivia would fall asleep, warm in his arms, not awakening until morning, in her own bed. Sam’s stories were mostly of India—rajas atop caparisoned elephants, camel markets in the desert, bazaars in a riot of colors, the chug of a train journey, the fire of curry in his belly. Every now and then, very late at night, when it was quiet and the rains came to scatter mellow gold drops in the light on the cabin’s deck, he would be reminded of his first trip into Burma in April 1942 and into the thick of the war, and those were stories of packed, impenetrable jungles, stone pagodas, the slick of sweat, the crackle of gunfire, the pain of death. ## Books with a similar feel - [Promises to Keep by Genevieve Graham](https://uncovered.ink/read/promises-to-keep-genevieve-graham.md) - [A Lady's Code of Misconduct by Meredith Duran](https://uncovered.ink/read/a-ladys-code-of-misconduct-meredith-duran.md) - [Tiffany Girl by Deeanne Gist](https://uncovered.ink/read/tiffany-girl-deeanne-gist.md) - [The Lie and the Lady by Kate Noble](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-lie-and-the-lady-kate-noble.md) - [The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-story-of-the-night-colm-toibin.md) - [The Temptation of Your Touch by Teresa Medeiros](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-temptation-of-your-touch-teresa-medeiros.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.