Sarah is the elder daughter of Lt. Col. John Layton, the commanding officer of the 1st Pankot Rifles, and his wife, Mildred. While her father is held in a German prison camp in Europe, Sarah and her family continue to live the upper middle class life of the British in India. However, unlike the rest of her family, Sarah is uncomfortable with the hierarchy that the British have established in India. She is not so sure of the racial philosophy that forms the basis of British dominance in the subcontinent and she occasionally shocks her family with her deviance from accepted propriety.