On an old estate along a quiet river in South India a family awaits the arrival of a granddaughter. When she fails to appear, and doesn't even call, the family begins to worry. Anita Ray accompanies her Auntie Meena to comfort her cousin's grandmother, and while there a maidservant falls into a trance. The maidservant reports that Devi, the Great Goddess is very angry. Even worse, the maidservant predicts that the missing granddaughter will never again visit the estate.

The family astrologer suggests an exorcism to cure the maidservant, and with this begins Anita's curiosity about the astrologer, his associates, and the disappearance of a number of family antiques.

The Wrath of Shiva takes the reader into a little-known world in Kerala, South India, an old world of sacred groves and the gods who guard them, of devotees who accept divine possession and the exorcists who would cure them, and of the treasures that lie scattered across the Indian landscape and those who would claim them.