The author and narrator, Eun Ji, was born in California to Korean parents. When she was 15 and her brother 18, her parents decided to move back to Korea for a temporary job which was only meant to last three years. Instead, they were gone for seven years and Eun Ji struggled with anger, isolation, and loneliness through her teenage years. This pain sent her searching for family stories: of her grandmother Kumiko who survived WWII and the Jeju Island Massacre; of her grandmother Jun who survived years of her husband's infidelity's until she died seemingly of a broken heart. Of her own mother, orphaned early, and her decisions to be present for siblings rather than her children. Eun Ji moved through identities-- a student, a traveler, a dancer, a poet-- and through languages-- Korean,  English and Japanese-- trying to find her place in the world and a why to forgive her parents for leaving her. There's a lot of pain in this story, but the ultimate message seems to be that the only way to move past it is to face it and name it.