Kingfishers Catch Fire

Kingfishers Catch Fire is a 1953 comedy novel by the British writer Rumer Godden. It was partly inspired by her own time living in Kashmir. The title is taken from the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Synopsis
After she is widowed and left with little money and two children, an independent-minded Englishwoman chooses to live in India rather than return to Britain. She is idealistically attracted to living a peasant lifestyle in a small village. A series of cultural misunderstandings follow with the local inhabitants.