A luminous debut novel-the story of a friendship between a young schoolgirl and an aging professor-that follows them over the years and gives us an intimate look at a Catholic community in a Bombay fishing village.

On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. It is 1978. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her baby daughter, ill with dengue fever, at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes the child will live. 

​Nearly a decade later, Francis meets the child again. She is Celia, daughter of a fisherman who is running from a debt collector. When an accident brings their families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves with unexpected new allies.  Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, at time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk, The Unbroken Coast is a lyrical novel that explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home.

NALINI JONES is the author of a novel, The Unbroken Coast, and story collection, What You Call Winter. Her work has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, Guernica, Elle India, Scroll, and numerous other publications in the U.S. and India, and she has contributed to anthologies about politics, music, and families, including those affected by HIV in AIDS Sutra. She has been awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, among other honors, and her short story “Tiger” was selected for O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. She is also a longtime coordinator of live music events. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, daughters, and dogs, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Fairfield University. She previously taught writing and literature at Yale University, the Columbia University MFA Program, and the Arcadia Center in Greece.

Her credits in music include Associate Producer of the Newport Folk Festival 2004-09, Line Producer of the 2005 televised benefit From the Big Apple to the Big Easy at Madison Square Garden, and Backstage Manager at Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

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