Content Warning: This section contains allusions to violence, sexual assault, and trauma.

Hằng is on a bus on the way to Amarillo, Texas, having flown into the country from a refugee camp the previous day. She chews ginger to calm her nerves and worries that her uncle, Chú Quốc, will catch up to her eventually. Hằng is sure the others on the bus think her strange, a “jagged-hair girl cocooned in long sleeves, heavy pants” (4) despite the heat, who barely understands the language. She marvels at the vast, flat landscape around her.

Eighteen-year-old LeeRoy drives past the same landscape as Hằng. He has driven up from his home in Austin and is headed to Amarillo, hoping to meet his idol, Bruce Ford. He wants to join Ford and train to become a cowboy with him.

Hằng persuaded her cousin, Angie, to drive her to the bus station earlier. Hằng needs to reunite with her brother, Linh, who is waiting for her: “It’s been six years, two months, and fifteen days since April 20, 1975, when the siblings got separated” (7). Linh is the only person left from Hằng’s youth; her grandmother and parents are all dead, and Linh is the only reason she crossed the sea in a rotting fishing boat.