Rajiv Travers, the child of an Indian mother and English father, is abandoned first to relatives in London and later to the care of his uncle_s mistress, Ruth Winters, a remote figure who writes romance novels in which beautiful women find the perfect man.The small American town where Ruth lives turns out to be as exotic to Rajiv as he is to its decidedly imperfect inhabitants. Though ever an outsider, hated by some, Rajiv is befriended by four children. As these children grow older, their relationships intensify, complicated not only by desire, but also by the personal failings-and secrets-of the adults around them.One secret in particular is kept by many: the mystery surrounding the death, years before Rajiv_s arrival, of an autistic child. The pressure of this silence, as it erupts finally into a night of madness and violence, costs one of Rajiv_s circle the chance for any real future.As Rajiv tries to establish his place in a town besieged by what cannot be spoken, he and his four friends come up against an adult world in which some are cruel, even brutal, but many are simply weak; others though, such as Ruth, have not given up the struggle against their worst selves. In their courage lies the means for these children to understand, for Rajiv finally to accept, not only the joy that love in its many forms can give, but what it can, at its darkest and most obsessive, exact.