Adrift in a failing marriage, Maya Wise is alone in a strange world far from home. Until, intrigued by an elderly Chinese man carrying a caged nightingale she begins to follow him through the streets and alleys of Hong Kong. Drawn to Ken Tiger and his painful tale of lost love in wartime Shanghai, Maya begins to piece together other stories, other histories from the world around her, and so comes to imagine another life, a different future for herself.