These poignant stories finely depict the lives of immigrants, through the themes of family adjustment, loss, and starting afresh in a new place. Set in suburban Toronto, New Jersey, Texas, and India, they draw out the conflicts in three generations of Indians whose lives interconnect even as they straddle the old and the new. What we sense is both the anguish of loss and the thrill of discovery. Viswanathan's quiet prose imparts powerful emotions that ring true, and her rendering of cultural clash is truly skillful and nuanced. The depiction of her characters? interior lives is so full and vital that they breathe and walk off the page. The reader is drawn in and completely absorbed into her world of transitions.