Uma is being raised by a conservative Indian family. She has a younger sister, Aruna, and a younger brother, Arun. The family believes that girls should be married off while boys are educated. When Arun is born, the young Uma is forced to cut off her education and start taking care of him.
Uma is readied for marriage, but has very few suitors. One of them prefers her younger sister; one of them gets engaged to her just so he and his family can access her dowry, but then backs off; and then the man she does marry ends up already being married—again, a scheme to get her dowry—and she returns home, deemed unmarriageable.
Her cousin Anamika is everything Uma is not—bright, beautiful, beloved. She makes a good match, but the man is cruel and completely uninterested in her, and she has a miserable, isolated life. Aruna marries a rich man and moves away, and the family does not see her often.
The failed marriage attempts compel Uma to live at home and take care of her elderly parents. When Uma was a child, Mira-Masi, Uma’s aunt, convinced her parents to let Uma go to the ashram with Mira-masi, but after a month she was picked up and brought home. There she had one of her “episodes,” seizure-like events that Mira-masi proclaimed were evidence of Shiva having chosen her as a vessel (which Uma did not like).
Later in life, the local doctor, Dr. Dutt, offers Uma a job, but her parents refuse and stymy the opportunity. Uma is frustrated that her parents do not let her do anything. The family gets the sad news that Anamika is dead. It is claimed that she committed suicide, but rumors persist that it was her husband and mother-in-law who killed her by setting her on fire.
In book two, perspective shifts to Arun, who is attending college in Massachusetts. He is staying for the summer with the Pattons and their two teenage children, Rod and Melanie (Mrs. Patton is the sister of Mrs. O’Henry, a Christian missionary’s wife in India, and she, along with Arun’s family, set this up). Arun feels like a fish out of water in the suburbs–he is a vegetarian in a land of carnivores, he does not share anyone’s interests, and many of the American customs seem strange and very wasteful. That summer Mrs. Patton tries to make Arun feel welcome, becoming a vegetarian herself and inviting him to go grocery shopping with her. Her attention makes him feel uncomfortable, as does the strained family dynamic. Mr. Patton is often impatient and angry, Rod is never home, and Melanie, Arun discovers, is bulimic.
Near the end of the summer Melanie almost dies from her illness and is sent to an institution. Arun readies himself to leave, and gives a scarf and tea from his parents to Mrs. Patton (they were meant for him, but he did not want to try and pack them up). Much diminished by the summer, Mrs. Patton is very touched by Arun’s gesture.
