Kate has come to Laos to find the unknown mother who troubles her dreams. From her spider-like house on the Mekong, she searches for her ancestral roots and for herself. Like the river, her journey is sometimes slow and meandering, sometimes violent and full of turbulence.
What can she learn from Kham, her gentle lover, whose presence brings six bullying policemen to her home in the dead of night? Why is she taken into custody when she tries to visit Long Cheng? Can her fellow-Australian, Wesley, with all his cleverness, help Kate to find her way? And who is the old Hmong woman in the dirt-floor hut who speaks fluent English but tells much less than she knows? She is as full of wisdom and mystery as the nearby Plain of Jars. As Kate learns more of the horrors of the so-called Secret War in Laos and the complicity of the CIA in the deaths of half the Hmong population, she begins to unravel the hidden secrets of her own family.