Chanty Sun came to the United States after surviving life as a child slave in Pol Pot's Cambodia. She was followed here by Kob, the father of her son, who claims ownership of her body and her spirit and who stalks her. Chanty's story of pure endurance unfolds through the eyes of Laurel Sullivan, who was born in a small New England town near Pease Air Force Base at a time when her father was flying bombing missions over Cambodian territory.

Chanty and Laurel meet in this New Hampshire town after a tragic accident and on the eve of another war. They are the East and the West come together as could happen only in America. The two head south in an old van alongside the Merrimack River, Chanty, haunted by Kob and the ghosts of her war; Laurel - lethargic, lost, in trouble - searching for womanhood among the pieces of her scattered family. The many obstacles they encounter along the way make their journey into a kind of female odyssey.