After several attempts, Mai still fails to learn anything specific about Baba Quan; all they would tell her are some basic facts and superficial comments. She also fails to convince Uncle Michael to help her grandfather relocate in the United States. Wanting to know more about her mother's and Baba Quan's Vietnam past—"the vivid details that accompanied every fault and fracture, every movement and shift that had forced her apart and at the same time kept her stitched together", Mai sneaks in her mother's room and steals the letters that her mother has kept writing her, but has not let her read them yet. From her mother's secret letters, Mai finally learns the unspoken family history that Thanh has been avoiding telling her and the reason why Baba Quan did not show up at their escape. Unable to maintain his rental payments, Baba Quan, whom Thanh once believed to be her father, prostitutes his wife to his rich landlord, Uncle Khan, whose wife is sterile. Tuyet, Baba Quan's wife, later on has Khan's child, Thanh. From this act, Baba Quan secures his land and gets endless benefits from the rich landlord. The Khan's soon adopt Thanh and send her to a Catholic boarding school. Living with shame and rage, Baba Quan has been planning to get revenge on his landlord by committing murder but never succeeds. Later on when the war begins, Baba Quan becomes a Vietcong. His village is declared a free-fire zone, and his family is moved away from their ancestral land to a nearby strategic hamlet, while he stays there to keep working with the Vietcong. Thanh's mother dies during the transition. In accordance with Vietnamese ritual, Thanh has to escort her mother's body back to their home village for burial. By a riverbank on her way back home, Thanh witnesses Baba Quan murder his landlord. Struck with panic, Thanh runs away and leaves her mother's body behind. Because Thanh loses her mother's body and fails to perform the proper burial rituals, she is left with a permanent scar and never adjusts her to new life in America. Mai: The first narrator of the novel, a teenage immigrant who struggles with being American and remaining Vietnamese. Thanh: Mai's mother, the second narrator. Baba Quan: Thanh's father, the mysterious father figure in the novel. Uncle Michael: the Vietnam War veteran who brings Mai to America. Aunt Mary: Michael's wife. Uncle Khan: Baba Quan's rich landlord.