Meena Kumari is seven years old when, in keeping with ancient custom, she marries Vishnu Rathan, a local boy of the same age who is also her best friend. But the course of her destiny changes forever when the wedding party is ambushed. Abducted by bandits who plan to sell her into slavery, the daring and resourceful Meena manages to escape. But it is not back to the life she knows. Adopted by an American couple, Meena travels to the United States, to grow up there in a completely different world.

Now, on the eve of her thirty-fifth birthday, Meena has begun to question her fast-track life as a systems analyst at a prestigious firm in San Francisco - the city she has called home for the last eighteen years. Her adoptive mother has died, and Meena keenly feels the loss. Lonely and homesick, she resolves to return to her roots and reclaim her cultural heritage.

Her quest is complicated by her growing involvement with Antoine Peterson, a sexy American novelist, as well as by the path she has chosen - a road that will lead her back to her lost love, Vishnu.