Tara's Secret

A Novel

William Garlington

As a young boy in 19th-century India, Gopala has numerous and conflicting religious experiences that guide him to become a priest at the temple of the goddess Ma Tara in Benares. His growing fame leads to his becoming the symbolic head of a national revivalist movement, but as Shri Jayananda, he often finds his own visions of enlightenment at odds with the movement‚s more orthodox ideology. The tension between his roles as guru and movement spokesperson is heightened with the emergence of a small group of personal disciples as manifest in his relationship with the young student Govinda. It is only with Jayananda's death that the question of Ma Tar‚s secret is resolved by Govinda, and then in a climactic and dramatic fashion.