The personal, often painful, histories of four Chinese American women who began meeting in San Francisco in 1949 to play mah jong are revealed as the daughter of one who has died searches for her sisters in China to tell them about the mother they never knew.
After the sudden death of her beloved father, twelve-year-old Franny spends the summer with her unique paternal grandmother in Wayland, Massachusetts, where she continues to care for the fairies her father knew as a boy while at the same time wrestling with her own grief as well as the old and new griefs of her mother and grandmother.
A mother visiting Paris brings back to her daughter all her best memories, of the beautiful fountains, the sparkling Seine, parks like paintings, and paintings like parks.
Remy, a master at getting rid of boyfriends before any emotional attachments form, finds herself strangely unwilling to free herself from Dexter, a messy, disorganized, impulsive musician who she suspects she has come to love.
Josie, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a French Quarter prostitute, is striving to escape 1950 New Orleans and enroll at prestigious Smith College when she becomes entangled in a murder investigation.
After years of having moved around, eleven-year-old Dinah determines to make a huge, dilapidated old mansion into a home for her mother and herself, but the wild beasts she summons from a stone wall to protect her may also imprison her.
Estrella is a filly, daughter of the lead mare, one of a shipment of horses bound for the new world, but when the ship is becalmed and the horses are dropped overboard to lighten the load, Estrella finds that it is up to her to lead the herd to land and safety.
