The Fertile Earth, a novel set in the fictional village of Irumi in the real South Indian state of Telengana, feels old-fashioned in the best possible way. Author Ruthvika Rao paints on a huge canvas with many characters and intersecting storylines unfolding from the 1950s to the 1970s, with one last bit set in the 1990s.

In the first part of the tale, four children embark on a relatively innocent, if ill-advised, adventure. Two sisters from the privileged, land-owning Deshmukh family go on a tiger hunt with the sons of Pichamma, the washerwoman who works for them. But things go awry in a manner that changes all their lives forever, and repercussions from that day follow them into adulthood.

What I enjoyed most about this novel were the masterful portraits that Rao conjures with words. For example, she writes that Sree, the younger sister, “was wearing a long silk skirt that brushed her toes, in a shade so violently purple that it seemed to punch a hole in the red earth beneath her feet.” And she vividly describes the village they all live in:

“Even the red earth under the orchard, covered by panes of dried leaves, made a deafening racket as though protesting against the feet that passed over it.”

No less meticulously depicted is the cruelty — which is an ongoing motif — inflicted by patriarch Surendra Deshmukh on the vetti (which can be translated as “forced or unpaid laborers”):

“In the eyes of the vetti, he knew that compassion and tenderness were peculiar things, just as the vetti mind was a peculiar thing, one that has to be conditioned with a constant stream of cruelty, so that his mind would expect it, as part of his daily life, just as naturally as he expected sleep to come for him at night, sweat to come to his brow when he worked the paddy fields or breath to move in and out of his lungs when he ran like a blinded horse in front of the veiled zamindari carts.”

In fact, toward the beginning of the book, 13-year-old Ranga, the elder son of the washerwoman, has to touch the muddy boots of Surendra and say, “Dora, nee banchan, dora” (“Master, I’m your slave, master”). And the Deshmukh family is not just cruel to the people outside their household. Vijaya Deshmukh, the elder daughter, faces incessant psychological abuse from her mother.

With the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency Telengana experienced in the 1970s as the backdrop, the novel’s central story involves the forbidden romance that develops between Vijaya and Krishna, the younger son of the washerwoman.

My biggest complaint is that this love story feels somewhat forced. What’s missing is the slow buildup of tension, attraction, and intimacy that are the hallmarks of good romances. Instead, readers are supposed to accept — with very little context or explanation — that these two vastly different characters, whether as children in the first part of the book, or as adults later on, simply adore each other. It’s a big ask.

Thankfully, their relationship isn’t the only thing propelling the story forward. The novel begins in media res, with a shocking revelation about a group execution, which immediately builds suspense. And then it goes back in time, traversing various storylines and slowly building toward the grotesque murders. The story also explodes in interesting directions with Sree and Ranga, the siblings of the main characters; Katya, a servant at the Deshmukh household with a secret of her own; and the friends that Vijaya and Krishna make as adults.    

For readers who love plot-driven narratives, there’s plenty to enjoy. But for those like me, who enjoy character-driven tales, the book feels short of fully satisfying. The writing is so beautiful, and the author is so skilled at the craft of storytelling, that I wish she’d spent more time exploring the psychology of her characters. Why is Vijaya’s mother so horrible to her but not to her other daughter? (Rao provides something of an explanation, but it’s unconvincing.) What do Vijaya and Krishna see in their flawed friends? And what makes Surendra Deshmukh as brutal as he is?

Without persuasive answers to questions like these, the book feels less thought-provoking and engaging than it otherwise might have been.

Ananya Bhattacharyya is a Washington-based editor and writer. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Guardian, Lit Hub, Baltimore Sun, Al Jazeera America, Reuters, Vice, Washingtonian, and other publications.

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