Summary

Sea of Poppies opens with an apparition of a ship that Deeti, a poppy farmer in India, sees although she’s never seen the ocean or even traveled outside her village. Deeti’s vision occurs at the end of winter when the poppies have been slow to shed their petals. Deeti gets up early that morning, prepares lunch for her husband who leaves for work at the opium factory, and then goes to her poppy fields with her daughter. Deeti is waiting for the petals of the flowers to fall so that the sap used for opium can be collected. She collects petals that have fallen and then toasts them in her hearth to make wrappers to pack the earthenware containers used for opium. At noontime, needing to say their prayers, Deeti and her daughter go down to the Ganges River to bathe. When...