Plot summary

Three concurrent but interrelated stories covering four countries on three continents are presented. Just outside the small town of Tazzarine in the Moroccan desert, goat farmer Abdullah has just purchased a rifle from his neighbor. The rifle is for his eldest son, pre-teen Ahmed, to shoot jackals who have been killing their goats. However, Abdullah's younger son Yussef, who in many ways displays more maturity than his brother, ends up being more natural with the firearm. The boys fool around with it, aiming at various items, testing its shooting distance, and Yussef shoots at a tour bus off in the distance; the boys guess by the actions of the bus that he probably hit it. The two scared boys later learn indirectly that an American tourist was killed on the bu, and they must figure out what to do with this information, which turns out to be incorrect: Susan Jones, did not die immediately from her gunshot wound to the shoulder, but she is seriously wounded. She and her husband Richard were on vacation at the time trying to mend their loving but troubled marriage; they haven't been able to deal with the recent SIDS death of their youngest, Sam. Not only must Richard figure out how to get Susan the medical attention necessary to save her life--the nearest hospital is two hours away--but he must also deal with a busload of fellow passengers who sympathize with the Jones' plight but are concerned about their own health and safety based partly on speculation that Susan's shooting was a terrorist attack. Richard and Susan's time away from their home in San Diego is extended, so their illegal-alien Mexican housekeeper Amelia must continue looking after the Jones' other children, young adolescents Mike and Debbie; however, her own son Luis is getting married in their hometown just across the border in Mexico and Amelia can't find anyone to stay with Mike and Debbie in her absence, so she decides to take them with her, which leads to potential problems as she doesn't have Richard's or Susan's written consent to cross the border with them. She's mainly at the mercy of their chauffeur for the day: her headstrong nephew Santiago. Meanwhile in Tokyo, Chieko Wataya, a deaf teenager, is mourning her mother's recent suicide. At the same time she's reaching her sexual awakening and she's having problems dealing with that because her disability turns off boys her age, so they reject her--so she seeks out that sexual release with older men in inappropriate ways, equating this sex with the love that's now missing from the Wataya household. These issues come to a head when the police come looking for her father, for what she believes is further questioning about whether her mother's death was actually suicide.—Huggo