From childhood in rural India, to priesthood, advanced studies in the US, and social services work in both nations—both in and out of robes—this memoir of life from the 1940s to the 1980s tells a thoughtful and fascinating personal story.

In the early 1930s in India, John Edakara was the first child born to a rural family in the southwest Kingdom of Travancore. His grandfather, father and uncles were farmers in the region, whose heritage traced back more than two centuries in service to a local royal family. There was no reason to expect John would soon live apart from his family, and follow a winding path to America. Yet forces of global economic and political crisis led to WWII, and set a course for his divergent life, when he was five-years-old.

John came of age in the aftermath of war, in a world of epic change. His family...