South India. Early 1940s. Sita, an illiterate girl, is given as a child bride to a boy with a secret that threatens to bring shame upon his family. Feeling thwarted within the confines of her family life, she follows her passions down a path that ends in grave tragedy and a complete unraveling of her spirit. But when her brother invites her to America to care for his motherless children, fraught with their own conflicts of identity and culture, Sita hopes for a new chance at life. Years later, approaching death in old age, she asks herself, 'What has my life been worth? What lessons can be drawn from it?' Spanning two generations and two cultures, this deeply affecting story, rich in character and incident, peers through those veils that separate one from another and blind us to each other's human plight.