Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry. But the atomic bomb that falls obliterates everything she has known. In search of new beginnings, Hiroko travels to Delhi. With the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again. But the shadows of history - personal and political - are cast over the interrelated worlds of Hiroko and her friends as they are transported from Pakistan to New York to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound families together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.