This autobiographical novel explores the coming of age of an Amerasian boy in Korea, torn between his mother's world - haunted by the specter of Japanese occupations and ruled by the imperatives of the spirit kingdom - and his father's transplanted America, the local U.S. army base where G.I.s are preparing for combat in another Asian nation, Vietnam. Young Insu grows up in the chaotic streets of Pupyong, among black marketeers, prostitutes, and castoff biracial children.

Death comes daily to Pupyong - through cholera, murder, fatal accidents that are either sad or suspicious - and touches Insu's life directly when his beloved aunt commits suicide after being cruelly spurned by her G.I. lover, and his friend James is found drowned in a drain and neighborhood gossips accuse James's mother, whose pursuit of a new blond husband would have been hampered by a half-black son. Although life on the streets is brutal, and the American school Insu attends no better, his Korean family provides him with love and the nourishment of stories and laughter. Like his mother, Insu is attuned to the world of spirits, and he is haunted by the ghost figure of a young boy, a secret half-brother.

When Insu learns the true identity of his ghost brother, he also makes a painful discovery about the corrosive prejudices that have torn his family apart.