Inspiration for The Tea Planter’s Wife

The Tea Planter’s Wife is a seductive love story but the novel also explores the tragic consequences of racism.

The idea for this novel came as my mother-in-law reminisced about a childhood spent in India and Burma in the 1920s and early 1930s, and told stories passed down by her family that included tea planters in both Ceylon and India.

Then, while listening to old audio recordings from the British colonial days in Ceylon and India, I stumbled across a wonderful voice that seemed to encapsulate everything about the period.

I already had an idea for a story about a life-altering secret, and I knew what I wanted to happen, so I turned to YouTube and discovered a series of videos that brought the past to life.

The final part of the jigsaw was all about developing the key characters. I read various histories to get a clearer idea of who might have been there during my chosen time period, and I followed that with a search for images, many of which can be viewed on my Pinterest page.

Best of all was going to Sri Lanka to stay on a Tea Plantation beside a beautiful lake in the hill country, a similar location to the imagined one in my book. We were looked after wonderfully at Castlereagh bungalow which is part of the Ceylon Tea Trails experience.

You can see the results of my search for images here.