In Punjab, 1929, the young bride Mehar does not even know who her new husband is, having been sequestered in the family "china room" with the other two women forced to marry three brothers. They are only allowed out at night when Mai, their controlling mother-in-law, summons them to a dark room at night. Mehar, strong-willed, vows to uncover what Mai doesn't want her to know about her new husband. Many decades later in 1999, a young man arrives at his uncle's Punjab house, hoping to find help overcoming an addiction and a history of racism and violence in England, all having to do with the secret that Mehar found out nearly a century earlier.
