Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. They are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier. But on the eve of the family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide. But Aki's instinct tells her there is much more to the story.