Thomas lands bewildered in Kathmandu, to find a place to scatter the ashes of his older brother Paul, who was a Peace Corps volunteer decades before in Nepal. He meets an American cohort of Paul's and her parents who work with Tibetan refugees. Helen stayed and became a Buddhist nun. His visit prompts the surprising revelation that Paul is the father of her daughter. The girl, Eike, grew up in Kathmandu and became an unlikely Buddhist shaman, or healer. His encounter with them is awkward but his mother in Seattle is thrilled. She is a Lithuanian refugee of World War II and lost her heritage. He finds echoes of his family's history in the plight of Tibetan refugees. While spending time to get to know Paul's daughter, Thomas dabbles in meditation and Tantric sex, flirts with Helen, and loses the ashes. They almost lose Eike when she goes into ritual trance to guide her father out of bardo, the state between death and rebirth. He and the other characters are connected by the death and transmigration of Paul's soul, the "white bird" that ties them together. Without knowing it, Thomas has followed a practice for grieving suggested in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.