Content Warning: These Chapter Summaries & Analyses discuss upsetting topics, including child sex trafficking, the commercial sexual exploitation of children, physical abuse, and death by suicide.

Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi helps her mother, Ama, hang laundry while Ama laments that their roof is leaky and needs to be fixed. Wealthier neighbors have tin roofs that keep the rain out and last longer, but Lakshmi’s family cannot afford such a roof because her stepfather has lost function in one arm, rendering him supposedly unemployable. He also has a gambling problem. (Lakshmi’s biological father has died.) Lakshmi wants to go to the city and work as a maid for a wealthy family, like her school friend, Gita, but Ama wants Lakshmi to stay in school. The main source of income for the family is their garden of vegetables and their rice crops, which they sell to make money. Lakshmi’s parents have already arranged for her to marry a shy boy named Krishna, and Lakshmi likes him and daydreams about their future together.

Lakshmi’s family lives in a remote mountain village in Nepal, which she has never left, and she knows little about the world beyond. She completes chores every morning, accompanied by her affectionate goat, who sometimes even follows her to school.