Content Warning: The source material for this guide includes depictions of war atrocities involving sexual abuse and violence, as well as child abuse and death. The novel also presents scenes of domestic abuse, alcohol addiction, and anti-Asian language.

In early 1945, teenage boys start vanishing in the small Kuala Lumpur town of Bintang. It has been a little over three years since the Japanese occupation of Malaya. The town’s residents suspect the soldiers of kidnapping their sons but remain cautious for fear of the secret police, the Kenpeitai.

This sentiment contrasts with the initial attitude that surrounded the Japanese arrival in Malaya. Cecily Alcantara remembers the day of their military parade, which saw the commanding Japanese general, Shigeru Fujiwara, welcomed by the people. General Fujiwara had outsmarted the British by entering the country through the Thai border, rather than through the sea as the Royal Navy had expected. In the months that followed, the Japanese began to disrupt much of Malayan society, killing many in their way.

Cecily is concerned for the well-being of her three children—Jujube, Abel, and Jasmin. Abel disappears on his 15th birthday, stirring Cecily’s family and the other townspeople to search for him.

Cecily believes that Abel’s disappearance is karmic retribution for something she did in the past, which makes her seem ungrateful in her neighbors’ eyes.