Long Journey Home is the story of a life which seemed almost incredible to the contemporaries of Margaret Noble (Nivedita). She was a warm-hearted and brilliant woman who left a successful career in England in order to live in India and help the work of the great Indian national and spiritual figure of that time, Swami Vivekananda. She adopted the Hindu religion and lived as a Hindu in Calcutta. Her influence on Indian history and on the Iives of many famous men and women of her day was celebrated throughout India in 1967, the centenary of her birth. Her love for India led her to spur on the struggle for Indian independence, and her small house became a meeting place for writers, politicians, and scientists. Swami Vivekananda was seeking to combine the vigour and activity of the West with the detachment and inner serenity of the East; in her life, Margaret Noble lived out the difficulties, the tensions, and the greatness of the attempt. He once wrote to her: 'What the world wants, is character!' and in this she never failed.