 "A Spoke in the Wheel" is an epic story alternating between two narratives—the story of the Buddha himself, and his times, told not as frozen legend, but brought to life with historical detail and craftsmanship.The parallel narrative is that of the chronicler, Upali, a Buddhist monk living in the time of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka, three hundred years after the Buddha's death.Upali, an embittered survivor of Ashoka's infamous conquest of Kalinga, attempts to recover from the horror of war and destruction by writing the "deglorified and factual" story of the Buddha's life and teachings.