Jozef Pronek, a young man from Sarajevo who stayed in the United States and watched the war on television, journeys from Sarajevo to the Soviet Union, Shanghai, and Chicago as he deals with the complexities of adolescence.

Told in two voices, Nadja grows up in war-torn Bosnia in the 1990s and, in the present, refuses to discuss her youth with her daughter, Zara, until both are traumatized by a terrorist attack in Rhode Island.