Protagonists not common in the literary world - an undocumented worker who makes the treacherous trek to the United States & an Indian-American couple in Berkeley.
Soli makes the danger journey to the United States from Mexico and finds her cousin Silvia. When she first gets out of the truck that smuggles her to the States, she sees signs in Spanish and faces like hers and think she is duped before realizing she is indeed in the States.
Silvia takes her in and gets her a job as a cleaner for the Cassidys. She gets a social security number.
She is treated well and her employers are understanding when they find out she is expecting.
She even starts to take her relatively comfortable life for granted.
Kavya & Rishi are an Indian American couple who met in college and now married.
They have made a comfortable existence for themselves that soon becomes unbalanced when they try to have a child and are not able to conceive.
Soli's comfortable existence is disrupted when she becomes careless and loses track of Saoirse, the Cassidy's daughter. Silvia comes to help her and they get in a car accident, resulting in an arrest where they are both discovered as illegal immigrants.
Soli is separated from her son Ignacio and sent to jail where she is treated like an animal. Kavya & Rishi end up adopting Ignacio, or Iggy as they call him. When Soli wants her son back, it is impossible to decide what the 'right' choice is now that we know these people's stories.
