After her village is devastated by famine, 10-year-old Sixiang is sold to a human trafficker for a bag of rice and 6 silver coins. Her mother is reluctant to let her go, but the promise of a better life for her beloved daughter ultimately sways her. Arriving in America with the profits from her sale and a single photograph of Guifeng, her absent father, Sixiang journeys across an unfamiliar American landscape in the hopes of reuniting her family. As she makes her way through an unforgiving new world, her father, a railroad worker in California, finds his attempts to build a life for himself both upended and defined by a long-lost love and the seemingly inescapable violence of the American West. This book considers the tenacity of family ties and the courage it takes to survive in a country that rejects you, even as it relies upon your labor.