On a year-long exchange programme in rural Oregon, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap Kashmiri chai for volleyball practice and understand why everyone around her seems to dislike Obama.

A fierce and unforgettable narrator, Hira finds herself stuck between worlds. The experience is memorable for reasons both good and bad: a first kiss, new friends ,racism, Islamophobia , homesickness.

Her body seems to be reacting to the change of environment, too, as Hira starts to feel increasingly unwell, until she begins coughing up blood and receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis, pushing her into quarantine and turning her new world upside down.