Mandala (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck)

News reaches the couple [Maharana Prince Jagat and his wife, Moti] that their only son, Jai, has been killed by the Chinese in a border skirmish, an inconsolable Moti send Jagat out to bring the boy's spirit home. On the journey, the prince becomes involved with a beautiful and mysterious young American woman. Thus begins the fatal attraction between Eastern and Western ways, one bound by rigid custom, the other temptingly ripe with freethinking.