"I am American now, but this wasn't always so".One night, during her fifteenth year, the peace of Sagesse LaBasse's summer night was shattered by a shot from her grandfather's gun.Sagesse is the narrator of the story. The LaBasse family are white Algerians, haunted by the country from which they were forced to flee as refugees. Sagesse's father and grandfather nurse secrets from the past which return to trouble the present. To make sense of their lives, Sagesse must roam across French-Algerian history weaving the threads of their lives-real and imaginary.