Nalini Jones’s debut novel, The Unbroken Coast (Knopf – expected 8/12/2025), is a story of intertwined lives, found families, regrets, and triumphs. Set in and around a Mumbai fishing village, the novel follows a prominent retired professor who is struggling with his memories, and a young Koli girl from the fishing village whose family is struggling to stay one step ahead of the debt collector.
Professor Francis Almeida, even retired, is a historian, and he finds scholarly projects that highlight the history of the place he calls home. His work results in the fancy hotel being built, and he’s rewarded for his efforts by his glass never being empty when he visits the hotel lounge. He’s a man marked by loss – a daughter died in his arms not long after birth. He’d also lost his fiancée, a girl who loved pink and breathed life and laughter wherever she went. And he’d lost that girl’s sister – the big “what if” of his life. He fills his days with research and alcohol and riding his bike to keep his memories at bay.
He met Celia when she was a baby, but neither know of their first encounter. It is their second, ten years later, when he runs into her on his bike and she breaks her arm that forever seals their conjoined fates.
Celia is the daughter of a fisherman, and her mother sells fish at the market, like the other Koli women of the village. Her younger sister has a “delicate deposition,” and Celia is at time a glass child, overlooked and boxed in for the benefit of Evangeline. Or so she thinks. She doesn’t know about the dengue fever and the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. She butts heads with her mother frequently, each knowing how to quickly wound the other.
At the request of Essie, Francis’s wife, Celia, begins to come to the home regularly. Her mother becomes their fisherwoman, and the Almeidas give the family hand-me-down clothes and shoes from their American grandchildren that were left behind during visits.
Years pass. Celia grows up, gets married. Francis’s memory problems become more apparent. The two continue to fade in and out of each other’s lives.
Spanning 1978 – 2005, The Unbroken Coast gathers up a bit of Mumbai history, including the 1993 bombings, Christian and Muslim relations, the struggles of Koli families who rely on fishing, and the rise of AIDS, and fries it all with onions in a sizzling pan.
It’s a solid debut.
*A huge thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy.
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