From Sri Lanka, a beautiful island snuggled in the palm of the Indian Ocean, comes this tale of a young woman's painful and courageous journey through poverty, abuse and cultural bondage to emancipation in the United States. Born to middle-class Sinhalese parents, Ranga Suriya feels lost as the youngest in a family of twelve feuding children that has fallen on hard times. One step away from starvation, she fills her days scavenging for wild berries and scraping brick walls to satisfy her hunger.
    As an adolescent she loses her heart to a young boy, Geoffrey, a member of her Seventh Day Adventist Church. Their love is expressed by passing secret notes to each other in hymnals. What would be an innocent sign of puppy love in the West is strictly taboo in Sri Lanka, and when they are found out, Ranga is publicly humiliated and receives a whipping from her father. Six years later, Geoffrey shatters Ranga's world by falling in love with another girl. Trying to escape the heartache, Ranga quits school and recklessly elopes. The marriage dissolves, but not before she gets pregnant. Now she has a new reason to live. Ranga's whole focus in life shifts to her son Samadha, protecting and providing for him, but without financial support from her estranged husband she is compelled to go work as a maid in war-torn Beirut. Ranga packs her bags and leaves her son behind with his grandparents.
    Life becomes harrowing within the fortress-like mansion of her new employer, Lisha, who works Ranga like a slave, withholds her wages, keeps her locked inside and assaults her with brooms and frying pans. Battered and driven to desperation, Ranga escapes her prison by leaping from a fourth-floor balcony, knowing she could die, but hoping to survive the fall for the sake of her son. She wakes up paralyzed in a Lebanese hospital, and despairs of ever walking again. From the depths of depression, however, springs hope. With the generous help of strangers and a kindly physical therapist, Ranga struggles to recover, defying the doctors who predicted she would never use her legs again. Six months later, still unpaid, unable to walk alone and encased in plaster from her neck down to her waist, she makes the arduous journey home. It is supposed to be a joyous homecoming, and while Ranga is relieved to be in the tender care of her mother, her reputation is ruined. The disturbing story of her experience as a maid appears in the newspaper, and Sri Lankans conclude that this single mother must have run off to Lebanon to earn money as a prostitute instead.
    Through sheer willpower, Ranga starts to walk on her own and finds a job doing secretarial work. Everything is looking up, when she meets a compassionate man who happens to be six years younger. Nuwan harbors the hope of being a Jesuit priest, but as the months go by and civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka, he finds himself falling in love with Ranga. When Nuwan's father hears gossip about their friendship, he begins publicly harassing and threatening Ranga and her parents. How dare an older woman - a single mother - steal their son?
Ranga borrows money to open a computer school and at last achieves financial stability, but as the war rages on, she decides to leave her homeland for America. There, free of cultural bondage and far from terrorist bombs, she'll provide a safer life for Samadha and marry the man she loves.
    Told against the backdrop of Sri Lanka's mesmerizing coastline, this story of human bondage and forbidden love, of courage and the will to live, is a gripping page-turner from start to finish.