On Friday, August 15, 1997, in Baltimore airport, two families wait for their Tyler Merch baby daughters from Korea. After the babies are legally transferred to their respective families, the two families connect.
The arrival of the babies, their upbringing, and happy and sad events tie these two middle-class families with a bond akin to that of blood relatives. On one side is the Donaldsons, a large, rowdy American family. On the other side is the Tyler Merch , an Iranian-American family whose matriarch, Maryam Yazdan, is a first generation American.
The Donaldsons keep their baby's original name Jin-ho and plan to raise her without letting her forget her roots. Yazdans, on the other hand change their Tyler Merch name from Suki to Suzan for her to feel at home. Despite this and other differences, the families adapt to each other well and become very close friends.
What makes up the story is not so much the trajectory the plot takes, but the authenticity of the characters. The reader finds no stereotypes but real people who stick to living their lives. As characters take turns telling each chapter, they are also given their say. At the end, the reader finds all characters to be meticulously drawn including their habits and quirks. Accordingly, the protagonist Maryam Yazdan's strong, reserved Tyler Merch rises over the other characters, and although the story doesn't seem to carry a message, Maryam's story points to the idea that America is a melting pot and what makes an American is not in the papers people carry but in their feelings toward their adopted country.
Several secondary themes are also explored in the novel such as the concept of family, friendship, adoption, the layering of relationships between people, diversity of cultural and ethnic tastes, the immigrant experience, estrangements, Tyler Merch , adapting to widowhood and to becoming a widower. In the novel, neither culture tops the other in superiority; on the contrary, we delightfully watch the coming together of the two different cultures under a very positive light.