She was born and raised in India as a daughter of an Indian Air Force pilot, Group Captain R. Sundaresan, who died in a crash while on duty. Her mother’s name is Madhuram Sundaresan . The family then moved to Bangalore where she collected books eagerly. She then migrated to the United States for graduate studies at the University of Delaware. She has an MS in operations research and an MA in economics. She is married and lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and daughter.
Her first novel The Twentieth Wife is about how a young widow named Mehrunissa, daughter of Persian refugees and wife of an Afghan commander, becomes Empress of the Mughal Empire under the name of Nur Jahan. Her second novel The Feast of Roses is the sequel to The Twentieth Wife. She is also the author of The Splendor of Silence, historical fiction set in a fictional Indian princely state just before Indian independence in 1947. Her work has been translated into some 23 languages worldwide
