Twelve different people from different walks of life discover how one chance meeting with a stranger can change a person forever. In this eloquent collection of stories, Madhu Bazaz Wangu draws from her own Indian-American heritage and examines the lives of ordinary people facing challenging circumstances-cruelty, prejudiced minds, twisted family relationships, unhappy marriages-and demonstrates how these situations transcend ethnicity and background as interactions with strangers force each character to look deep within themselves, often acknowledging painful truths and long-held secrets, in order to seize control of their own destinies and forge their own paths to independence and happiness.