The year is 1873, the place the unsettled Pacific Northwest. Into a Chinese laborer's camp wanders a strange white woman dressed all in black. Speaking a garbled but ecstatic language the laborers cannot understand, she can no more be ignored than persuaded to leave.

Someone must escort her back to whatever unknown place she came from, and that someone is Chin Ah Kin. Already worlds away from his native Canton, Chin embarks on what will prove to be an extraordinary odyssey with the enigmatic creature he knows only as Sarah Canary.

Karen Joy Fowler has written an awe-inspiring adventure, a work of literary magic.