Spanning more than 150 years, and set in multiple locations in colonial and postcolonial Asia and the United States, these interconnected stories contest assumptions and illuminate the complicated ways we experience, interpret, and pass on our personal and shared histories. A retired doctor is forced to confront the horrific moral consequences of his wartime actions. An elderly woman subjects herself to an interview, gradually revealing a fifty-year old murder and its shattering aftermath. And in the last days of a doomed war, a prodigal son who enlisted against his parents' wishes survives the American invasion of his island outpost, only to be asked for a sacrifice more daunting than any he imagined. Serizawa's characters walk the line between the devastating realities of war and the banal needs of everyday life as they struggle to reconcile their experiences with the changing world.