This bracing, intelligent debut tackles the strangeness of growing up, the joys and difficulties of breaking away from family, and our sometime absurd or downright dangerous rites of passage. The girls and women in these stories come up against the rules and roles that give shape to their worlds. As marriages are arranged over tea, blood feuds simmer beneath football games , and the rules of a city burn, they struggle between holding onto their families and seeking out new ways to liveand love. These stories ask, as our hands slip from the long line of tradition and we become refugees from home, what, if anything, is lost. And how is that what we thought we'd let go keeps finding its way back?