Part One: Chapters 1 - 5 Summary

The novel opens focusing on Sister Mary Praise, the mother of the novel's narrator. The unnamed narrator states that before writing this novel, he went to Madras in search of his mother's story. The following 500+ page story is what he learned.

Sister Mary Praise and her best friend, Sister Anjali, leave India for Africa after becoming nuns. While aboard their ship, many of the passengers come down with fever and fall deathly ill, including a rugged English doctor, Dr. Stone. Sister Mary Praise cares for him as best she can, and also runs between the various other passengers doing her best to care for them all. Slowly, it becomes clear to the reader that Sister Mary Praise is falling in love with the doctor, delusional with fever, as she cares for him, and even falls asleep next...