Kyoto, Japan, 1948. Noriko "Nori" Kamiza will not question why her mother abandoned, or her confinement to the attic of her grandparents' imperial estate. And she will not resist the scalding chemical baths she receives daily to lighten her shameful skin. The illegitimate child of a Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. When chance brings her legitimate older half-brother, Akira, to the estate that is his inheritance and destiny, the siblings form an unlikely but powerful bond - one their formidable grandparents cannot allow and that will irrevocably change the lives they were always meant to lead. -- adapted from jacket