Kief Hillsbery grew up with the legend of his great-grandfather's great-uncle Nigel, who had "gone out to India" and never returned to his family's home in Coventry, England. According to the many stories, he'd left the British East India Company abruptly and gone to live in Kathmandu; he'd been killed by a tiger; he'd been involved with shady dealings regarding a famous diamond. From childhood, Hillsbery always had "a clear sense that [the family] disapproved of Nigel and the vague notion that there was more to his story."
In Empire Made: My Search for an Outlaw Uncle Who Vanished in British India, Hillsbery describes his decades-long, on-and-off exploration into Nigel's life and death. It is an absorbing story, told with an eye for suspense and the odd, engrossing detail. Alternating chapters follow the author's own travels and Nigel's, the latter re-created using personal correspondence and official records from the 1840s. Necessarily, Empire Made also delves into British and Indian politics, and the nuanced racial and class-based prejudices and pressures that characterized the British East India Company for centuries. The background history that contextualizes this story can be convoluted, but Hillsbery wrestles this "historical quicksand" gamely, and his digressions enrich the sense of strange wonderment that characterizes this investigation. In the end, this epic story of travel, research, family mystery and centuries-long colonial effort ends with uncertainty; but Hillsbery's voice in closing does find satisfaction in what he's learned. --Julia Jenkins