Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone is one of my all-time favorite books. So, it was with great excitement that I purchased his latest, The Covenant of Water. Oprah has said it is one of the best books she has ever read. However, when I received the book in the mail (go indy bookstores – it came before it was out anywhere else – and you know how much it takes for me to spend money on a book…) I realized that it was 700+ pages!!! “The Covenant of Wateris the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which 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. Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.” (Amazon) I did love it, but it was far too long. I can’t tell you how it could have been shorter and still covered the territory it did, but even in loving it, it made me weary.