With sensitivity and wit, Friedman creates a tableau of characters, scenery, sounds, smells, and tastes as varied as those who have claimed or seek to claim a home within our borders.

In this compelling collection of stories, we find immigrants everywhere: in the poignant and doomed relationships between the documented and undocumented; in a squalid encampment by the Rio Grande, where a young mother sends her daughter over the bridge to the U.S. alone; in the heart of multicultural New York, where a Jewish woman seeks a loan from a Muslim bank manager to fund her cancer treatment; and in a New England home, where bats in the attic are threatening the last vestiges of stability for a divorced and desperate middle-aged woman and her twenty-something Chinese American tenant.

These stories explore the deep ambiguities in how we perceive each other. Readers will grow to love Friedman’s characters, despite their flaws, as they grapple toward a deeper caring for the world around them.