Flood of Fire

British, Indian, and Chinese cultures clash in this final book of Ghosh's trilogy (after River of Smoke) about the first 19th-century Opium War, launched when China embargoed trade on the drug. There are many different characters' stories here: wealthy ship merchant Mr. Burnham, who will stop at nothing in order to establish an opium trade with China; Zachary, a ship's carpenter, who aspires to both Mr. Burnham's wealth and his wife; Captain Mee, whose warrior's bluff hides a broken heart; his havildar (a noncommissioned officer in the Indian Army) Kesri, who must walk a tight rope between the British officers and the Indian soldiers; the widowed Shireen, who breaks with her Parsi tradition to sail to China to recover her family's fortune; and opium addict Freddie Lee, who struggles with his mixed-race heritage and his grief for his murdered parents. All these characters and more intersect in surprising ways as the events race to a climactic end.