When her father is injured, fourteen-year-old Nazia is pulled away from school, her friends, and her preparations for an arranged marriage, to help her mother clean houses in a wealthy part of Karachi, Pakistan, where she finally rebels against the destiny that is planned for her.
In 1981, the height of Ireland's "Troubles, " eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.
Chronicles the experiences of five generations of women, beginning with Fela, a Puerto Rican sugar plantation African slave who cherished a stone containing the essence of her unborn child and allowed her master to impregnate her, as they discover their powers and struggle with relationships with their husbands and daughters.
In Mallory, New York, as five sisters, aged eleven to seventeen, deal with assorted problems, conflicts, fears, and yearnings, a mysterious middle-aged man watches them, fascinated, deciding which one he likes the best.
Presents aspects of family life in the preindustrial Western world, including households of the wealthy and the poor, courtship and marriage, and the care and training of children.
Since her adoption, seventeen-year-old Frances has lived a quiet suburban life, but soon after she begins falling for the new boy at school, she receives a summons from her mentally ill birth mother, who has just been released--after serving eleven years for smothering Frances's younger sisters--and still wants to kill Frances.
