Synopsis

In the last years of the British Raj, an American missionary family stays on in Midnapore, India. Though the Hintons enjoy white privileges, they have never been accepted by British society and instead run a boarding house on the outskirts of town where wayward native Indians come to find relief.

Young Gene Hinton can’t get out from under the thumb of his three older brothers, and the only person he can really relate to is Arthur, his family’s Indian servant. But when Uncle Ellis, a high-ranking British judge, suddenly arrives and announces he’ll be staying indefinitely in their humble house, far from his prestigious post in Himalayan foothills, life as Gene knows it is interrupted. While his brothers are excited at the judge’s arrival, he is skeptical as to why this important man is hiding out with them in the backwaters of Bengal.

Also skeptical is Arthur. Then an Indian woman appears on their doorstep—and, after growing close to her, he learns the sinister truth about the judge. Torn between a family that has provided him shelter, work, and purpose his whole life and the escalating outrage of his countrymen, Arthur must decide where his loyalties lie—and the Hintons must decide if they can still call India home.

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Praise

“In this gorgeously written book, Joanne Howard explores the corrupting influence of power, both within the family structure and the broader world. Rich with sensory details and vividly drawn characters both human and animal, Sleeping in the Sun is a stunning novel that grabs your emotions and doesn’t let go.”—Ginny Kubitz Moyer, author of A Golden Life

“Howard writes with vivid intensity […]. The tale unfolds cinematically with lush descriptive prose; you will fully sense the streets and inhabitants of this Indian city and its countryside. But the real depth of this story lies within the relationships […] both the raw attitudinal differences and the subtle undercurrents the characters either endure or ignore. Twelve-year-old Gene is the heart of the book, the most insightful of all, and the voice you will come to rely upon.”—Francine Falk-Allen, author of A Wolff in the Family and Not a Poster Child

“Large and saga-like in scope, and set in 1930s India, Joanne Howard’s Sleeping in the Sun delivers a compassionate portrayal of a missionary family as they struggle to navigate the personal and political crosscurrents of enchantment, terror, love, and deceit. What I admire most in her debut novel is the courage with which this writer lifts the masks of disguise from her characters and reveals, as if superimposed on the place itself, that secret, interior world of human emotions.”—Jack Driscoll, author of 20 Stories: New & Selected

Q&A with the Author

What message do you hope to convey about colonialism and identity through the Hinton family’s story and interactions?

It’s definitely not a favorable portrait of colonialism; even though the main character, Gene, is a young boy with a naive view of the world, I didn’t want it to come off as unserious or easy going on the British Raj. But I also didn’t want history to be front and center to the book, but rather serve as a backdrop for the human story going on between the Hintons, Arthur, and the judge. Even though the novel is influenced by these huge forces of historical events, what I still hope readers take away is the detail of the everyday. When doing my research, my grandfather’s diary was filled with trivial but relatable things like feeling bored over the school break, being bewildered by the girls in his class, or getting jealous when one of his brothers got a new pair of glasses. I wanted to be sure to zoom in on details like that and see how they may actually convey the messages of the novel better than a more straightforward historical account.

How does the Hintons’ family story relate/differ from your own family’s history?

It certainly wasn’t as traumatic as the novel’s plot turns out, but there was still a lot of tension and uneasiness during that time period. And as my grandfather and his brothers moved to America and established families of their own here, the question remained: how do they think of India? Can they call it home? My grandfather was born and raised in India, and his first language was Bengali, but for the rest of his life he never returned to India because he knew it would have changed so much, and the India of his youth no longer existed. So this idea of “is India home?” I think was a question in real life for my grandfather and for the Hintons.

How does your background as an Asian-American writer influence your portrayal of cross-cultural interactions and historical events in your novel

I was able to draw from my own experience as a mixed-race Asian American to inspire this dual reality that the Hintons occupy, and to a lesser extent the space Arthur occupies as a converted Christian Indian who both works for the Hintons but wants to stay connected to his Indian identity. The novel’s setting where a range of racial identities all interact with each other is a huge aspect of the story, and I’m glad I could bring my personal experience to the work.

What are some of the most significant historical and cultural details that you included in the novel to bring the British Raj setting in India to life?

When it comes to bringing the setting to life, it’s all in the little details, from the hand-cranked ceiling fans (punkahs) to the nightly ritual of shaking out the bedding for any critters, all things that I found in our family archives. I also loved including a scene at the Gope Gargh (The Old Gope as the Hintons call it), which is now an ecological park that preserves the ruins of an old fort from the Mahabharata. I visited this park on my trip to India and was inspired by the mythical atmosphere and the way the forest had grown over the ruins of ancient civilization.

About the Author

Joanne Howard is an Asian American writer from California. She holds an MFA in writing from Pacific University. Her poetry received an honorable mention from Stanford University’s 2019 Paul Kalanithi Writing Award. Her fiction has been published in The Catalyst by UC Santa Barbara, The Metaworker Literary Magazine and the Marin Independent Journal and her nonfiction has been published in Another New Calligraphy and The Santa Barbara Independent. She lives in Santa Rosa, CA.

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