It's 1937, and with her father in debt, motherless sixteen year old Roop learns she is to become the second wife of Sardarji, a wealthy Sikh landowner whose first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him a child. Roop believes that the strong willed Satya will treat her as a sister, but their relationship swiftly becomes ominous and complicated. What the Body Remembers is also Satya's story. Mortified when Sardarji marries Roop, Satya resorts to desperate measures to maintain her place in society and her husband's heart. Sardarji himself struggles as the India he knows begins to change when separatist tensions between Hindus and Muslims trap the Sikhs in a horrifying middle ground and the departing British prepare to divide the land into India and Pakistan.