Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English journalist,
short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kate Sheriff, a young American
woman, knew without a shadow of a doubt what her calling was. She was to move to India where she would dedicate herself
to improving the condition of Indian women. In her ensuing struggle to lay aside her favoured Western lifestyle, and her adjustments to life in the Indian subcontinent, Kipling presents east and west side by side and reveals the complex, often tangled nature of the two.