San Francisco ghostwriter Ruth Young finally begins to understand her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother LuLing's preoccupation with ghosts and curses when she reads Luling's writings of her dark backwoods childhood in 1920s China--where LuLing's mute, disfigured nursemaid committed suicide, and a nearby cave held what may have been the bones of the lost ancient hominid Peking Man.
Tashi, an African woman married to an African-American missionary, struggles to deal with the psychological effects of the brutal circumcision she underwent in adolescence, which causes her son brain damage in birth and results in her facing a murder charge.
After her San Francisco home is bombed, Calcutta native Tara Chatterjee sets out to find her roots, tracing the story of her great-great-aunt, Tara Lata, who was married to a tree in her Indian village at age five.
Nanzeen, married off to an older man, moves from her Bangladeshi village to live with him in London in the 1980s and 1990s, where she raises a family, learns to love her husband, and comes to a realization that she has a voice in her own life.
A chance encounter between two families--the Donaldsons, and the Iranian-born Yasdans--at the Baltimore airport prompts an examination about what it means to be an American.
San Francisco ghostwriter Ruth Young finally begins to understand her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother LuLing's preoccupation with ghosts and curses when she reads Luling's writings of her dark backwoods childhood in 1920s China--where LuLing's mute, disfigured nursemaid committed suicide, and a nearby cave held what may have been the bones of the lost ancient hominid Peking Man.
