Himalayas: Unknown Year. ‘Ten thousand strands of trouble,’ is what Bird’s father says, watching as Bird’s sister braids her hair. On the eve of her fourteenth year, that trouble finds Bird. Fleeing her home to escape an arranged marriage, she attempts to vanish into a crowd of pilgrims not knowing that violence is circling, and that it already has its eyes on her. In search of her own life and her own truth, she could never imagine how long and how far it would take her. Darwin: Present Day Waking in a hospital bed, Bird tries to remember what brought her here. A man whose gaze she knew to fear, a stolen car, a plastic gun and a real bullet in her shoulder. Kindness is being offered here, so why is her instinct always to run? Strand by strand, she begins to remember.
