As the protagonist of the novel, Lenny Sethi tells the tale of her childhood in the city of Lahore. Stricken with polio, Lenny endures an operation, leg braces, and casts, and receives a private education provided by a tutor. She does not interact with the world as normal children, like her brother, Adi, and her Cousin, do. She spends an inordinate amount of time in the adult world of her Ayah, as Ayah takes Lenny everywhere she goes. Interacting with adults, and watching their behavior, allows Lenny to grow up with more knowledge of the world, as it changes around her, than other children have. Her unique viewpoint allows the novel to transcend her childhood concerns in the depiction of life in Lahore.

As members of a tiny minority ethnic and religious group, the Parsee, her family and Parsee friends escape much of the violence and death surrounding them during the partition of India. However, Lenny’s young life is overshadowed by the gruesome lessons of religious intolerance, the wrestling for political power that leads to mob rule, mass killings, and the betrayal and murder of family friends.

Preoccupied with her own life, as a child would be, Lenny’s experiences of the violence and the political upheaval of the Partition thrust her into the adult world and force her to cope with the realities of the world at a very young age.