Westen Gray was just eight years old when his Caucasian mother died and his Chinese father, Xin, sent him away to be raised by her relatives. More than twenty years later, after a lifetime of estrangement, Westen receives an invitation from his father to travel with him to China. So it is that two strangersÑa father and a sonÑtravel halfway around the world to a land that one of them knows intimately and the other has never seen. The future of their relationship hinges on the trip and on the contents of a sealed letter written by WestenÕs mother before her deathÑa letter that threatens to answer the lifelong question neither of them has dared to ask.