Sarah Brandt has made her uneasy way down to Chinatown to deliver a baby. There she meets a group of women she might otherwise never have come Irish girls who, after alighting on Ellis Island completely alone, have married Chinese men in the same predicament. And although the new century has practically arrived, New Yorkers, immigrants and natives alike, still cling to their own kind. So the mixed-race children of these marriages are often treated badly, by both the Irish and the Chinese. Unfortunately, the police share such attitudes, so when the new mother's half-Chinese, half-Irish, fifteen-year-old niece goes missing, Sarah knows that alerting them will prove futile. But she knows one person she can turn to - Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. Together they begin the search for the girl themselves. And when the missing girl is found dead in a Chinatown alley, Sarah and Malloy have ample suspects in her murder - from both sides of Canal Street.