When twelve-year-old Maya and big sister Zara set off on their own from Delhi to their grandmother's home of Aminpur, a small town in Northern India, they become separated and Maya decides to continue their quest to find a chest of family treasures that their grandmother's family left behind when they fled from India to Pakistan during the Great Partition.

Describes how a cycle of rioting and violence leading up to the partition of India and birth of Pakistan resulted in brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing on both sides of the border, creating a divide between India and Pakistan that persists decades later.