History professor Lindsey Page has a quiet, well-ordered life, but it's about to get complicated. Her daughter, with whom she has a troubled relationship, shows up on her doorstep. The immigrant woman Lindsey is interviewing for a book asks her for help in reclaiming the son taken from her during a massacre in her Salvadoran village. And her closest friends, from college days at Berkeley, where they witnessed the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, are hiding secrets that will forever change those friendships. Lindsey must grapple with questions of family identity, truth in wartime, the ethics of power for robber barons and the law of unforeseen consequences. Moving back and forth from the 1970s to the present, from the Bay Area to El Salvador, this sprawling saga follows Lindsey, her friends, and family through tumultuous political, social, and cultural changes and choices.