Parvati is a seven-year-old blind girl living in India with an alcoholic father, a prostitute mother, and a sadistic brother. But with two friends her age and a kind Jain to provide support, she manages to survive despite being a Dalit, or Untouchable.
Halfway across the world, Mortimer is an Oxford professor who discovers an old book by the economist Ricardo in a second-hand bookstall. A handwritten poem slipped within the pages catches his attention.
As Parvati struggles to avoid a child molesting sugar lord, Mortimer discovers the poem's author was a First World War British soldier who believed strongly in free trade. Mortimer's investigation into this powerful concept leads him to the book's owner, a doctor named Madeleine with whom he has an immediate connection.
As romance percolates between them, Madeleine heads to India to help a paediatric eye clinic where she sees the country's economic failings firsthand. She invites Mortimer to witness it for himself and thus sets all of these seemingly separate lives on a collision course with destiny that will change them all forever.
Filled with hope and optimism, The Free Trader's Ghost explores a deep connection between humanity, trade, and our innate ability to progress.
About the Author: Padraic Fallon was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1946. He was the sixth and youngest son of the Irish poet and playwright Padraic Fallon.
He was a distinguished financial journalist, chairman of Euromoney Institutional Investor, and a director of the Daily Mail and General Trust.
He died in October 2012 and is survived by his wife, Gillian; four children, Jolyon, Nicola, Harriet, and Annabel; and nine grandchildren.
The Free Trader's Ghost, his third novel, began as a poem in 2011 that was inspired by the Christmas truce of 1914.