Summary of The Man With Many Hats
To Rachel, exuberant Morris is larger than life—he fills her home in Calcutta with wonder and excitement. As Rachel grows up, glimpses of her father's tempestous spirit, womanizing and bullying reveal a darker side to his character. When her family falls apart, her childhood memories collide with new realities. Rachel survives her own tragedy and begins to reconcile the image of the father she knew with the increasingly lonely and tragic figure he has become.

She comes to terms with the complexity and totality of the man with many hats. The debut novel has the warmth and vibrance of both the City of Calcutta and its dwindling but vital Jewish community. The author handles the difficult issue of the father-daughter relationship with sensitivity, humour and painful honesty.

Review by Chitra Divakaruni- Author of Oleander Girl, Palace of Illusion.
Jael Silliman evokes an India that has all but disappeared and draws on her personal knowledge of the Jews of India to create an unique and powerful novel about the human heart.

Jael Silliman, born into the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta, was educated at Loreto House in Calcutta, and later at a boarding school in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. She studied at Wellesley College and did graduate studies at Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin and received her doctoral degree at Columbia University. She was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Iowa and a Porgram Officer at the Ford Foundation. She has published several books and articles, including Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives From A Diaspora of Hope. This is her debut novel.